


Musical Thrones

by SkaianRedeemer



Category: Homestuck, MS Paint Adventures
Genre: Author Commentary, F/M, Theoryfic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-03
Updated: 2013-01-27
Packaged: 2017-11-11 08:27:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 10
Words: 29,543
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/476584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkaianRedeemer/pseuds/SkaianRedeemer
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Back in September 2010, I wrote a theory-fic about Terezi not forewarning Karkat about her plans to exile Jack Noir/Spades Slick, and how it would cause everything to break down into in-game anarchy, players swapping out the role of leader like a game of musical chairs.  And it was awful.  So I brought it back, unedited!  But with commentary to keep it bound within the summoning circle so it can't hurt you.  Also available without commentary, if you're into that, so the word count's almost twice as high as it should be.</p><p>Since I frankensteined a scene from this for use in <i>A Hand in Holding Hands</i>, spoilers for that.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Thirteen Card Pickup

For those not in the know, _Musical Thrones_ was my second Homestuck fanfic, and the first to hit the internet, put on the MSPA forums on September 8th, 2010. It was a Theoryfic: covering what I had thought was going to happen in the upcoming canon, namely after [this](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004431) late August update, wherein Terezi gets instructions to exile Jack. Unfortunately, I decided to write the whole thing instead of just the first chapter, and was completely jossed by [these](http://www.mspaintadventures.com/?s=6&p=004474) updates at the start of September, where Terezi communicates her plan to Karkat. My theory was that she _wouldn't_ communicate her plans to Karkat, who was quite attached to Jack at the time, and that that would tear the entire group apart. Not just the two of them: everyone else as well, the disorder cascading down from the collapsing powerbase as a result of the Trolls' natural confrontational instincts, with a few notable figures (Karkat, Feferi as the heiress, Eridan as other nobility, and Vriska seeing a good opportunity) cycling control of the group and punting one another out like a game of musical chairs. After all, remember that this was just a few days before Aradia skipped ahead, and I recognized that the story would need conflict if it was going to carry through to the end of the Sgrub session (so did Hussie, so he just skipped the whole block, providing him with a good place to hide information as well).

Unfortunately, the fic just isn't that _good_. In fact, the fic is frankly quite bad. Its most notable flaw is that it dangles: I never intended to conclude it. I just wanted to spell out what I figured would occur in the first hours of the collapse of command. Second, it lacks direction: the fic opens with Terezi and Karkat but is actually about Feferi, and the final scene just jumps to Vriska, Tavros and Eridan for some reason? And Terezi and Karkat don't do anything even in the shots they're on-camera? Since the fic covers only the body of what I was predicting, it was all set up, and so probably couldn't have had a central character except under forced circumstances… though that would still have been better. Third: like [Patcheye](http://archiveofourown.org/works/261004), _Musical Thrones_ represents a grand failure on my part to actually communicate my intent. The interesting part about the collapse of command theory is the impact, not the politics. The first chapter lights the fuse and the last chapter hints at the impact, and frankly, that's the exact same problem _Patcheye_ had in 6300 less words: the problem was introduced, the problem was completely ignored, except when it was briefly hinted at towards the end. Utter failure. I'm not sure why it happened (for _Thrones_ , that is. I know why it happened for _Patcheye_ but that's a subject for another day). I've grown a lot as an author since 2010, but the thing is… I really think I should have been better than _this_.

I would have left the fic to rot, but I recently chose to revive a scene from it for [A Hand in Holding Hands](http://archiveofourown.org/works/330885). Also, I had recently been commenting to the _Hands_ fans about the way I write Feferi, and that interpretation originates in this fic. I decided that these two factors warranted a cautious re-release of _Musical Thrones_. Indeed, if you plan on reading _A Hand in Holding Hands_ and don't want to be spoiled, I advise you just plain up and go read it now, because no good can come from reading this dross first. In fact, I'm just going to talk about _Hands_ openly throughout the commentary, since I did lift a whole scene and beyond that, there's still a year and a half to look over.

But I do mean that thing about the cautious release: I have no intention of letting this fic be an ugly boil on my library, nor do I want to invest the time that would be required to fix the fic while retaining all the parts present (the easiest way to fix the fic would be to cut out every chapter but the first and last, and replace the middle with no more than two pages of transition). To this end, I'm providing extensive commentary. Want to read it? [Skip ahead to the next chapter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/476584/chapters/826801) which contains commentary in-line with the fic. Don't? Stay here. Be wary, though. I've barely edited the fic, to fix only the most extraneous typos and grammatical mistakes, for the sake of preserving the fic in its current, horrible form, and for the sake of saving me from having to edit two copies of the same fic if I notice any mistakes later on.

As a bonus feature, at the end of this commentary, I'll be providing a summary of my original Homestuck fic, written on paper and since lost or tossed, I can't remember which. As you'll see in time, it's not something I could have written up in the first place.

Near the end of Fanfic Thread 2, [nextian](http://www.mspaforums.com/showthread.php?31358-MSPA-fan-fiction-2&p=4306403&viewfull=1#post4306403) suggested we provide DVD Commentary for a fic. It's a year and a half later, nextian, but your suggestion was not forgotten. I was just really, really slow about it.

* * *

Karkat presided from atop an awkward throne, bubbling soper behind and the guilty-accused afore, grinning like an idiot. She had made a point of stressing that she was going to "represent herself," which tried Karkat's thin patience as he had not in any honesty intended to let her have any defence at all. As she continued to ramble so persuasively on the point that there was no actual crime committed in this instance, he lost his temper for the umpteenth, but first decisive, time.

"Why?" he demanded, slamming his fist down on the recouperacoon beside his leg. A stuffed dragon, cyan, tapped against the window on its roof-hanged rope, which Karkat felt added favourably to the milieu, while a pack of computers chimed away unanswered in the corner, which he felt did not. That was the most of it: while they were not alone, the others present were tucked in safely in bed, any dragon not already having been sent to its sentence had been stolen by imps, and all about them there was only graffiti and fluorescence wrapped about them in the carpets and the furniture; a sombre court scene on the wall struck out at the eyes with shock-red lances. All, from floor to ceiling and in between, was overwritten with a hundred white-chalk iterations of the genetic letters "R", "O", "A" and "r", as only befit the respiteblock of the Seer of Mind.

He jumped to his feet and stood straight in her face and made sure she felt the distance. "Why? Were you both sitting around pretending it was the good old days when you were vigilantes feeding post-grubs to a six-storey spider when you went, I don't know, 'H3Y VR1SK4, L3TS G3T R1D OF THE ONLY GUY THAT L1K3S US 1N TH1S WHOL3 PL4C3!'"

"Oh my god, you are so terrible at that."

"Oh, oh, or maybe: 'Terezi, how a8ought we do something so stratos-fucking-pherically moronic that it'll torque Karkat's nu8 like it's a8out to 8e torn off until Derse comes to finish us off or the Reckoning throws Pulse and Haze on top the White King's rotting corpse?'"

"I'm serious, you're just absolutely terrible," she said, grin as broad as ever, her teeth as filthy as the rest of her and all of them with such limited access to hygiene in The Medium. "It's all a8out the inflection, YOU KNOW WH4T 1 M3AN? But yeah, I can really see why you think this is all about you, Karkat. I mean, besides the ego thing. She reached up with her can and pushed him away directly between the eyes. "You two must have been half-way through your letters."

"Letters?"

"'DEAR LUSUS,' yours starts. SEE THE INFLECTION, KARKAT, YOU BRING IT FROM THE DIAPHRAM. Or ' **Dear Parents, or Possibly Giant Sgrub Cloning Machine,** ' for him.' ' **I just met the most wonderful boy!** ' you both say. 'HE JUST MAKES ME FEEL SO…'" And she wriggled with theatric pleasure, concluding with a demure smile, short stretch of her arms and punctuating girlish grunt and squeal. "Oh," she said, "and then he would have probably added, ' **PS: I may have exiled the Queen, destabilised the government and left us defenceless us to Prospit. Hugs!, Jack.** '"

Karkat weighed the pros and cons of strangling her with characteristic introspection. "You…" his fingers brushed aside her hair as they inched towards her neck. "Um, excuse me, let's just backtrack a bit to, oh I don't know, when YOU were the one that broke the Black Ring? If anyone should be taking a fucking bow for 'exposing them to Prospit' it's the top-hat wearing fucking ringmaster here…"

"Oh you silly, stupid boy." Ignoring his hands, she reached up through his grasp to pat him on the cheek. "Of course it was me, but that's not _funny_." And then she began to laugh and he had to step back, fists clenching and unclenching, unsure how to even take the first step from there onto semi-solid ground. He paced a touch, checking on the recouperacoon. Gamzee tossed in his sleep, makeup running off the just-submerged corner of his jaw, muttering something about "bats." Feferi lay across from him, head in arms folded on the far edge, in a prime example of the communal living conditions they had been forced to adopt in the name of strength in numbers. She was having no nightmares, in fact, a smile crept up on her sleeping face and she looked fist to burst. All in all, Karkat felt it was for the better that she faced the wall.

The prosecution took the opening and continued her tangential case. "But seriously, how could it not be all about you? With you as our big scary leader, well! Every plan falling into place, every relationship fixed up nice like it's some grub jigsaw to you. And well," she took a step to close the gap between them, and leaned coquettishly towards him. "Well let's just say I missed your dulcet tones. Why, you just radiate authority these days!"

She cupped her hand again on his cheek. His fists showed him brace himself. Here comes the jab, and god knows he had a cutter ready for it to take her back down to size. To his surprise, she leaned to his ear and spoke in a whisper: "What do you say we wrap up this little trial so you can have the prosecution to your chambers for a short… recess?"

His eyes shot wide, his face fell a mile in terror, and she felt it and broke away with echoing peals of insane laughter. "Oh my god, your face! heheh3h3…" She clutched at her sides. "…H4H4H4H4H4!" He stared agape. "That's it! That's all I needed. I'm guilty, put me away, I can't take it anymore!"

Karkat's expression was quite the opposite. He watched her laugh for a while until she took a break to look up and check the damage, which was substantial. "…don't do that."

"Why?" she said, with a dark undertone in her voice, "SOR3 M3MOR13S?"

Karkat knew more than well enough that he had to change the subject, immediately. "Where's Vriska?"

"Oh, excuse me, Your Tyranny, but I'm only allowed to answer questions that implicate myself. If you want me to implicate someone else, you'll need evidence."

Karkat wished he had something to snap or break but ultimately there was nothing he could do to vent his anger without backing down from her. "I saw Vriska there, how's that for evidence?"

She laughed again. "Oh yeah. Well, hell if I know. She's probably off hiding, honeymooning with Tavros and celebrating whatever who-knows relationship they have on that big pile of boondollars she got for kicking your ass."

She was not even going to afford him the luxury of fuming to himself that time: "I have to tell you, that was the best thing I saw all day. There was the funniest thing, the worst thing, and the best thing, all in a row. Very tidy."

Karkat's thoughts were all over, he needed time to regroup, but he could have done anything better in the entire world than to bid for time by asking: "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Well," she said, hand stroking her chin, and then, with the casual tone of one recounting a funny story throughout, she recalled: "first you started swinging your curvy little stick at me, and first I was confused, and then you were shouting, and you clipped my leg, and I hit the ground." He barred his teeth at her, but she pretended not to notice. "So you've all left me upset, hurt – emotionally and bleeding – and there's this squeezing… uh… crushing feeling, like, in my chest? Because I didn't know why you're attacking me, you know, uh... you dipshit? Now I know, I know, that doesn't sound like the funniest part of my day but bear with me."

He held up a hand in front of her face, not that she seemed to notice that either, though perhaps more legitimately. He interrupted her all the same. "Oh, no, now that's where you're wrong. This is already hilarious. You didn't know what was going on? I catch both of you just seconds after you stuffed an unconscious Jack Noir into a shuttle on autopilot and you expected me to what, break into applause?"

"But then," she said, pushing aside his hand with a spread of her arms and cutting him off before he could say more, "But then, when you had me down and you could see my face, you're all like 'I thought you were an imp,' with this like, totally devastated tone in your voice?" He couldn't help it, he actually growled at her, but he knew it wasn't half going to be enough to shut her up. "And then I got it! It was all just a mistake, and you never meant to attack me and it was funny!" She clapped her hands once, and then leaned forward with her shark-grin leering at him. "And then, ooh, and then, you locked me up and went to try to catch Vriska, and that pain, you know, in my chest? Came back, squeezed really, really hard? And then…" She make a spreading gesture with her hand. "Nothing! And that was the worst part of my day. So glad you asked, by the way."

"Hey!" he snapped, pointing a finger in her face. "What do you… where do you get off with… HOW DO YOU THINK I WAS FEELING WH—"

"And then," she finished, rocking on the balls of her feet. "Then she kicked your ass." Karkat shut up just to stare at her in astonishment, and realized all at once that he had completely forgotten with whom he was dealing, and what she was capable of. "See?" she said, and counted off: "Funniest, worst, best."

"You can't honestly have expected me to just let you get away with that," he said, in what passed for him as a hushed voice, something closer to a normal speaking tone.

She shrugged, her tone slipping a touch as honesty slipped between the cracks in an emotional surge. "I was trusting you to trust me. I trust my ears and nose and tongue to see for me…" At that point it had occurred to her that she had not meant to say any of that out loud, without obfuscation or misdirection. She wrapped up quickly: "...I thought I could trust you, too."

"All you had to do was tell me," he muttered. "Email, write all over one of my memos, fuck! 'H3Y K4RK4T IM GONN4 GO RU1N 3V3RYTH1NG YOUVE B33N WORK1NG FOR M4YB3 W3 SHOULD H4V3 A L1TTLE T4LK 4BOUT 1T.'"

 

There it was. The perfect opening. All she had to do now was to hit him back at just the right angle and he would collapse under the weight of his own ego, though the cost was high. In leaving himself vulnerable he had struck a blow of his own. She could not argue with his actual point. It was true, all she should have done was to talk to him, have let herself be open for just a few minutes, and it would have been a better day. But it was too late for that now, and she had never, never gotten into an argument she intended to lose, not even when the other Troll was right.

"Everything you've been working for? That's funny, last I saw there were twelve of us. And that's the real joke, Karkat, you still think this is all about you. Well I've got news for you: you're a petty, whiny grub."

"Oh, big words," he replied, "coming from—"

"You're a self-absorbed rage case—" they were talking at once "—with so little charm and charisma that you couldn't lead Gamzee to a fireworks display!"

She had only raised her voice a few levels. He, on the other hand, was spitting, almost frothing with every word she poured on, as his fists trembled. "…uppity little do-nothing so obsessed with her fantasy future that she doesn't recognize real emotion when it reaches out and and—"

"And through all of this it's become," she laughed derisively, "pretty obvious that if anyone dies before this is over the only one responsible would be you!"

So he hit her. The swing she had expected, in fact it was the very target of her goading, but neither of them actually expected him to connect. His fist cut across her right cheek in spite of her best efforts. She was already fast and every rung of the echeladder put her hand in the way all the faster, but she had underestimated just how much one got to climb for exiling the Black Queen. All the same, she caught his arm a second too late, seizing him by the arm, fluid despite the injury. They stood in tableau for a good while, both shocked dead by what they had see clear-coming, until Terezi reached up with her free hand and lowered her shades, meeting his eyes with two blasted pupils drowned in milky jaundice. Karkat tried not to meet those eyes. He remembered when he last had, hands sweaty, surrounded in a field of blast-shattered grist and everything right in the world. But now, while her face spoke a cold-stunned mix of emotion, her eyes stared vacant and he could not look at them. Not after the punch, now that they had crossed all bounds of Pity.

Softly, she whispered, "…I win."

She twisted his arm at an angle it did not want to go and he fell with a cry to his knees as she began to laugh, at first so hysterical in victory – having provoked him to a blind lunge off the precipice of ordered debate – that she had need to catch her breath. When she had finished she repaid him across the face with a backhand and he had to brace himself to keep from hitting the ground. Her laughter returned, now throaty and dark, from manic before to purely intentional. She took ahold of her cane off the loop of her wrist and pressed it to his chest until he lay upon the floor with her looking down from above. Foot replaced cane, the latter striking to the floor aside his ear and bearing her weight, and a triumphant grin of off-stained teeth replaced the laughs, leaving them in a heavy silence.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he shouted to break it, which made her laugh all over again.

She smiled even broader. "Tit for tat, Karkat, and what the hell is wrong with you? Where's the Karkat I used to know, or did he go snoozing off home to Alternia tucked next to your better half? Besides, can't a girl have a L1TTLE FUN, K4RK4T?" She leaned slightly forward, the weight on her foot pressing down on his chest. "You got to get up and play His Tyranny for little old me, but I think it's time to stop being who we're not. If you wasn't honest with myself, I'd jUsT gO cRaZy!"

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you're no judge, Karkat. You stood up there just waiting for the evidence to match your conclusion. Any grub can do that. If you were a real judge you'd have hit me with the sentence before you locked eyes on me but you just don't have the horns for command."

Karkat scowled and picked at the side of his head. "I'm sorry, say that last part again, I think I had some 'you're a fucking bitch' stuck in my ear." He pointed his finger into her face and shouted: "I can damn well do anything I want and there's nothing you can—"

"THEN GET UP HERE!" she said in her mimic of his Trollian voice, stepping off his chest and clasping the hand he had been using to gesture. She crouched down low and he felt her breath on his face. "Get up here, and show me you actually deserve to sit there and call me a traitor, you wriggling coward!"

And she stood up and jerked his arm, tossing him one-handed such that she caught him again behind the neck, just as he gripped her had by the back of the head and they pulled one another into a kiss of spades. Lips locked and grips tightened, most of his weight on hers and hers heavily weighted onto her cane. His free hand grabbed up and clutched at her side, a free-flow of energy jumping hot between them as a dry voice in the back of Karkat's mind growled over coursing hormones and blinding emotion.

" **So good to see,** " it said, " **that this is how you put up with the crooks… that banish your friends to crazy barren ash-worlds. Just saying. Oh no, by all means, carry on.** "

Karkat did his best to ignore the voice and pulled back, just enough, his lips a hair's breadth from hers and only far enough to say: "Terezi…"

"I hoped that was what you wanted…" she cooed back past a malicious smile.

"Oh yeah, all of it," he said, gently stroking one of her horns with the tip of his finger.

She cracked another smile. "All of it? You wanted to kiss me and," she said, squeezing the back of his neck, "get dipped like a girl while doing it?"

"No," he whispered. He nuzzled his way up her face, tracing a line along her jaw with his nose. "I wanted to kiss you… after you were guilty and grovelling for mercy at my feet."

She raised an eyebrow, knowing him too well to be surprised by his tone, but before she could finish saying "Like hell—" Karkat had his right arm off from gripping the side of her t-shirt to knock away the cane as he simultaneously kicked out a leg, and he pulled her crashing to the ground. His arm caught the fall; hers did not, and she shouted aloud in pain. Groaning, she curled to one side inadvertently to coddle it, rolling up into his side in an awful mockery of matesprit closeness. He could not help it: it was his turn to laugh. She was right. Being honest was liberating.

"Is this how it's going to be, you big expert?" she asked into her arm once they had had a chance to rest. Her hair had fallen across her face and she pushed some of it aside with her now only good hand. She captchalogued her glasses as she did, looking up to his eyes as best she could with her own. A teal bruise was beginning to flower along her face where he had first hit her, and no doubt he was developing his own. "You and me just…" she rolled away, onto her back just beside him, "…fighting to see who gets to be in charge and never really winning till… till hell, Karkat, whenever this goes?"

"Sure, I mean, whenever you want, you just throw a fist my way, I'll block it, we'll make a big mess of the place, how's that sound? But most kismets play mind games, I figure you'll like that."

"As for your coy little 'whenever this goes,' you're way too much of a huge bitch for me to imagine I'd start gunning for someone else, if that's what you're panicked about. Give me some credit."

"Good," she whispered, and then in either honest speed or reckless disregard for her the arm on which she rolled, she went roundabout and slammed her fist just off the side of his nose.

He cried out as she calmly stepped over, straddled his legs and checked her leg for injuries of her own – a teal scrape and nothing worse. She lay down, settling her elbows on his chest and waited for him to calm down and scowl at her again. "Just a warning," she said, head cupped in her hands, "I play mean."

He rubbed his face furiously with his sleeve to clean up blood that wasn't there. "Thank god, if you didn't play mean I'd think you were sick."

She traced a finger along his cheek with a frown. "God I missed you."

He reached up and pulled her down to him, no preposterous lifting stunt in their way, hands free to hold, teeth to bite; a chance to do what kismets do, before they know better.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Commentary free version continues [in this chapter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/476584/chapters/836181).


	2. Thirteen Card Pickup (Commentary)

(Sorry for the repetition if you're coming from Chapter 1, but I'm afraid I direct-linked this commentary so the intro needs to be repeated. If you've already read it, just scroll down.)

For those not in the know, Musical Thrones was my second Homestuck fanfic, and the first to hit the internet, put on the MSPA forums on September 8th, 2010. It was a Theoryfic: covering what I had thought was going to happen in the upcoming canon, namely after this late August update, wherein Terezi gets instructions to exile Jack. Unfortunately, I decided to write the whole thing instead of just the first chapter, and was completely jossed by these updates at the start of September, where Terezi communicates her plan to Karkat. My theory was that she wouldn't communicate her plans to Karkat, who was quite attached to Jack at the time, and that that would tear the entire group apart. Not just the two of them: everyone else as well, the disorder cascading down from the collapsing powerbase as a result of the Trolls' natural confrontational instincts, with a few notable figures (Karkat, Feferi as the heiress, Eridan as other nobility, and Vriska seeing a good opportunity) cycling control of the group and punting one another out like a game of musical chairs. After all, remember that this was just a few days before Aradia skipped ahead, and I recognized that the story would need conflict if it was going to carry through to the end of the Sgrub session (so did Hussie, so he just skipped the whole block, providing him with a good place to hide information as well).

Unfortunately, the fic just isn't that good. In fact, the fic is frankly quite bad. Its most notable flaw is that it dangles: I never intended to conclude it. I just wanted to spell out what I figured would occur in the first hours of the collapse of command. Second, it lacks direction: the fic opens with Terezi and Karkat but is actually about Feferi, and the final scene just jumps to Vriska, Tavros and Eridan for some reason? And Terezi and Karkat don't do anything even in the shots they're on-camera? Since the fic covers only the body of what I was predicting, it was all set up, and so probably couldn't have had a central character except under forced circumstances… though that would still have been better. Third: like Patcheye, Musical Thrones represents a grand failure on my part to actually communicate my intent. The interesting part about the collapse of command theory is the impact, not the politics. The first chapter lights the fuse and the last chapter hints at the impact, and frankly, that's the exact same problem Patcheye had in 6300 less words: the problem was introduced, the problem was completely ignored, except when it was briefly hinted at towards the end. Utter failure. I'm not sure why it happened (for Thrones, that is. I know why it happened for Patcheye but that's a subject for another day). I've grown a lot as an author since 2010, but the thing is… I really think I should have been better than this.

I would have left the fic to rot, but I recently chose to revive a scene from it for A Hand in Holding Hands. Also, I had recently been commenting to the Hands fans about the way I write Feferi, and that interpretation originates in this fic. I decided that these two factors warranted a cautious re-release of Musical Thrones. Indeed, if you plan on reading A Hand in Holding Hands and don't want to be spoiled, I advise you just plain up and go read it now, because no good can come from reading this dross first. In fact, I'm just going to talk about Hands openly throughout the commentary, since I did lift a whole scene and beyond that, there's still a year and a half to look over.

But I do mean that thing about the cautious release: I have no intention of letting this fic be an ugly boil on my library, nor do I want to invest the time that would be required to fix the fic while retaining all the parts present (the easiest way to fix the fic would be to cut out every chapter but the first and last, and replace the middle with no more than two pages of transition). To this end, I'm providing extensive commentary. Want to read it? Skip ahead to the next chapter which contains commentary in-line with the fic. Don't? Stay here. Be wary, though. I've barely edited the fic, to fix only the most extraneous typos and grammatical mistakes, for the sake of preserving the fic in its current, horrible form, and for the sake of saving me from having to edit two copies of the same fic if I notice any mistakes later on.

As a bonus feature, at the end of this commentary, I'll be providing a summary of my original Homestuck fic, written on paper and since lost or tossed, I can't remember which. As you'll see in time, it's not something I could have written up in the first place.

Near the end of Fanfic Thread 2, nextian suggested we provide DVD Commentary for a fic. It's a year and a half later, nextian, but your suggestion was not forgotten. I was just really, really slow about it.

* * *

> Let's start this commentary off with my original author's notes:

_Ugh, you guys, I am so tired of working on this fic, you have no idea. It was just this goofy little idea I had to start writing again by putting an IDE/Theory to narrative - this was just after Snowman started chatting with Terezi and I had a pretty good idea of what that was going to mean for the gang, up to and including pairings that... well let's just say I'm not at all fond of the first setup but that was the prediction. And when I say I had a "pretty good idea" I mean "yeah, I was totally wrong," especially in regards to that one pairing in particular. Andrew did one thing I didn't expect, as I saw when a srs RL issue kept me from even touching the fic for days as updates rolled on, and the whole dynamic changed (imho, for the better) because of it._

_Now it's done and I'm so tired of editing, you guys. So tired. I only barely care enough to colour Trollian text and remove some of the mild sexual tension because I just don't want to risk poking the line when I don't really know where it is. If anyone cares to read the Mildly Less Safe For Work version, or just wants to get a head start on the completed fic (I'll post the other parts daily, except the smaller fourth) I tossed the whole thing into the Pit of Voles yesterday to languish unseen amongst the miscellany. I'm sure that should be enough to for anyone interested to find it._

> Yeah, that FFn version no longer exists, I culled it pretty early on. As a result, I've actually lost it entirely, as I don't seem to have the original version on my computer any more – indeed: I deleted all versions of the fic from my computer and had to retrieve the fic from the forums. Ouch. I only remember one change, but I think there were others between Karkat and Terezi that I've simply forgotten.

> The idea that I might be tired of editing might seem silly now that I've written the much lengthier _A Hand in Holding Hands_ but to be honest, I've always found editing exhausting. More importantly, this fic was written when I still had a full time job, so editing was less a thorn in my side and more of a knife being actively plunged. In fact, maybe all the fic's flaws could be chalked up to the full time job, which isn't really a very bright thought now that I'm employed again.

> Still on the original notes:

_So anyway, here's my story about how a little omission can spiral completely out of control, until no one knows what to do, who to trust, or who's even in charge any more. I hope you all enjoy!_

> Essentially the only part of the fic that actually says what the fic is about, because the story itself certainly doesn't pull it off.

* * *

Karkat presided from atop an awkward throne, bubbling soper behind and the guilty-accused afore, grinning like an idiot. She had made a point of stressing that she was going to "represent herself," which tried Karkat's thin patience as he had not in any honesty intended to let her have any defence at all. As she continued to ramble so persuasively on the point that there was no actual crime committed in this instance, he lost his temper for the umpteenth, but first decisive, time.

> Oh, good, I've screwed up one sentence in, this is going to be a joy. Not only did I misspell "sopor", but I just don't make it clear that he's leaning up against a recouperacoon. Why didn't I just say so at once? In _Hands_ , Karkat is leaning up against the back of the couch the Kids and Trolls have lugged into the computer lab. The implication in this fic is that Karkat just started "court" in a blind rage and it was so impromptu that he's essentially conducting it in someone's (Terezi's) bedroom in his hurry. _Hands_ spends a good period of time describing the rest of the courtroom to make it look more orderly in contrast.

"Why?" he demanded, slamming his fist down on the recouperacoon beside his leg. A stuffed dragon, cyan, tapped against the window on its roof-hanged rope, which Karkat felt added favourably to the milieu, while a pack of computers chimed away unanswered in the corner, which he felt did not. That was the most of it: while they were not alone, the others present were tucked in safely in bed, any dragon not already having been sent to its sentence had been stolen by imps, and all about them there was only graffiti and fluorescence wrapped about them in the carpets and the furniture; a sombre court scene on the wall struck out at the eyes with shock-red lances. All, from floor to ceiling and in between, was overwritten with a hundred white-chalk iterations of the genetic letters "R", "O", "A" and "r", as only befit the respiteblock of the Seer of Mind.

> As befits a ramshackle organization, Karkat and the others seem to have turned Terezi's respiteblock into a bit of a command center, complete with computers and communal bedding ("communal" in the sense that they're sharing it. I guess they cost a lot of grist?). Note my guess at Scratch's genetic code, which would not be revealed for some months, and how it's in white to match his own text.

He jumped to his feet and stood straight in her face and made sure she felt the distance. "Why? Were you both sitting around pretending it was the good old days when you were vigilantes feeding post-grubs to a six-storey spider when you went, I don't know, 'H3Y VR1SK4, L3TS G3T R1D OF THE ONLY GUY THAT L1K3S US 1N TH1S WHOL3 PL4C3!'"

"Oh my god, you are so terrible at that."

"Oh, oh, or maybe: 'Terezi, how a8ought we do something so stratos-fucking-pherically moronic that it'll torque Karkat's nu8 like it's a8out to 8e torn off until Derse comes to finish us off or the Reckoning throws Pulse and Haze on top the White King's rotting corpse?'"

"I'm serious, you're just absolutely terrible," she said, grin as broad as ever, her teeth as filthy as the rest of her and all of them with such limited access to hygiene in The Medium. "It's all a8out the inflection, YOU KNOW WH4T 1 M3AN? But yeah, I can really see why you think this is all about you, Karkat. I mean, besides the ego thing.

> This was the introduction of Tone to my fics, and yes, it was right here from instance one. I think Karkat doing an impression of the others, and Terezi's subsequent mocking, introduces Tone far better than anything I did in the many edits of _Hands_ ' two drafts, and probably explains why the original forum crowd had no trouble understanding what was going on in _Hands_. Note that Karkat's impression isn't noticeably bad like it is in the revised scene, with an off colour and all that. In a manner of speaking it _was_ wrong, in that Vriska's text was forum colour "blue" and not her own #005682, but that was the case for Terezi as well so it was at least internally consistent. In fact, all the colours were forum stock, as I wasn't aware that the forum allowed unusual colours.

She reached up with her can and pushed him away directly between the eyes. "You two must have been half-way through your letters."

"Letters?"

"'DEAR LUSUS,' yours starts. SEE THE INFLECTION, KARKAT, YOU BRING IT FROM THE DIAPHRAM. Or ' **Dear Parents, or Possibly Giant Sgrub Cloning Machine,** ' for him."

> I still love how she breaks up her impression for that line about the diaphragm, but I couldn't bring it into _Hands_ , where Terezi can't do Karkat's voice in particular and keeps stumbling over it if you're paying close attention. The impression issue isn't just meant to highlight the break in their relationship at that point, but to expand on the questions Rose and the others will later have about the Tones, by having the person that most does impressions (Terezi) screw up one that should be simple.

> The bold text is supposed to be Spades Slick. I think mentioning "parents" was an absurd mistake, as it completely obfuscates what on earth I'm supposed to be talking about, and who's supposed to be talking here. I think I said it because for some reason I thought Jack was spawned with the game, not in a cloning machine, so for all we knew he might think he had parents? That's silly. Not only does he have the cloning tattoo, but it's silly in general. Why did I think that?

"' **I just met the most wonderful boy!** ' you both say. 'HE JUST MAKES ME FEEL SO…'" And she wriggled with theatric pleasure, concluding with a demure smile, short stretch of her arms and punctuating girlish grunt and squeal. "Oh," she said, "and then he would have probably added, ' **PS: I may have exiled the Queen, destabilised the government and left us defenceless us to Prospit. Hugs!, Jack.** '"

> I really should have found a way to put that squeal impression into _Hands_ , that would have driven Karkat crazy.

> Also, pre-empted _Yugioh! Abridged_ with that hugging-as-knife-wounds gag.

Karkat weighed the pros and cons of strangling her with characteristic introspection.

> The best part about disowning a piece of writing is coming back and being pleasantly surprised by the jokes and good bits you've forgotten.

"You…" his fingers brushed aside her hair as they inched towards her neck. "Um, excuse me, let's just backtrack a bit to, oh I don't know, when YOU were the one that broke the Black Ring? If anyone should be taking a fucking bow for 'exposing them to Prospit' it's the top-hat wearing fucking ringmaster here…"

"Oh you silly, stupid boy." Ignoring his hands, she reached up through his grasp to pat him on the cheek. "Of course it was me, but that's not _funny_." And then she began to laugh and he had to step back, fists clenching and unclenching, unsure how to even take the first step from there onto semi-solid ground. He paced a touch, checking on the recouperacoon. Gamzee tossed in his sleep, makeup running off the just-submerged corner of his jaw, muttering something about "bats." Feferi lay across from him, head in arms folded on the far edge, in a prime example of the communal living conditions they had been forced to adopt in the name of strength in numbers. She was having no nightmares, in fact, a smile crept up on her sleeping face and she looked fist to burst. All in all, Karkat felt it was for the better that she faced the wall.

> Gamzee opens up my weird obsession with [Troll Batman](http://archiveofourown.org/works/242235) in what is probably the least effective mention of it in all my works. This one was actually forced so the references to the Batman gag wouldn't just be in chapter 2. Regret!

The prosecution took the opening and continued her tangential case. "But seriously, how could it not be all about you? With you as our big scary leader, well! Every plan falling into place, every relationship fixed up nice like it's some grub jigsaw to you. And well," she took a step to close the gap between them, and leaned coquettishly towards him. "Well let's just say I missed your dulcet tones. Why, you just radiate authority these days!"

She cupped her hand again on his cheek. His fists showed him brace himself. Here comes the jab, and god knows he had a cutter ready for it to take her back down to size. To his surprise, she leaned to his ear and spoke in a whisper: "What do you say we wrap up this little trial so you can have the prosecution to your chambers for a short… recess?"

His eyes shot wide, his face fell a mile in terror, and she felt it and broke away with echoing peals of insane laughter. "Oh my god, your face! heheh3h3…" She clutched at her sides. "…H4H4H4H4H4!" He stared agape. "That's it! That's all I needed. I'm guilty, put me away, I can't take it anymore!"

> I think Terezi's a little out of character here, but in both versions she's already got her plan in mind and is trying to sexually rile Karkat early so that he'll realize she's talking about kismesis as soon as she comes to it. His brain's a bit like a slot car going full speed off the corners, the best thing she can do to manipulate him is put him on the right slot and hope for the best. That's why I feel it's more OOC here than in _Hands_ : I kept this fake-out in _Hands_ , as the Karkat and Terezi in that fic are broken up, and the idea that she might want to hook back up would be right in his blind spot. Indeed, note Terezi and Nepeta's interaction in that same chapter of _Hands_ to get a full impression of why I felt this was necessary: socially speaking, it seems that Terezi and Karkat should not be interacting at all if he wasn't so determined to play leader and she making her move.

Karkat's expression was quite the opposite. He watched her laugh for a while until she took a break to look up and check the damage, which was substantial. "…don't do that."

"Why?" she said, with a dark undertone in her voice, "SOR3 M3MOR13S?"

Karkat knew more than well enough that he had to change the subject, immediately. "Where's Vriska?"

"Oh, excuse me, Your Tyranny, but I'm only allowed to answer questions that implicate myself. If you want me to implicate someone else, you'll need evidence."

Karkat wished he had something to snap or break but ultimately there was nothing he could do to vent his anger without backing down from her. "I saw Vriska there, how's that for evidence?"

> I liked some of the made up bits about the Troll court system in this fic, but I think some of them are forced in a bit harder than I intended.

She laughed again. "Oh yeah. Well, hell if I know. She's probably off hiding, honeymooning with Tavros and celebrating whatever who-knows relationship they have on that big pile of boondollars she got for kicking your ass."

> Because you get boondollars for levelling. Even though this part, at least, was written before [S] Make her pay, it looks like I already had an idea that Sburb has a nasty PVP system.

She was not even going to afford him the luxury of fuming to himself that time: "I have to tell you, that was the best thing I saw all day. There was the funniest thing, the worst thing, and the best thing, all in a row. Very tidy."

Karkat's thoughts were all over, he needed time to regroup, but he could have done anything better in the entire world than to bid for time by asking: "What the hell are you talking about?"

"Well," she said, hand stroking her chin, and then, with the casual tone of one recounting a funny story throughout, she recalled: "first you started swinging your curvy little stick at me, and first I was confused, and then you were shouting, and you clipped my leg, and I hit the ground." He barred his teeth at her, but she pretended not to notice. "So you've all left me upset, hurt – emotionally and bleeding – and there's this squeezing… uh… crushing feeling, like, in my chest? Because I didn't know why you're attacking me, you know, uh... you dipshit? Now I know, I know, that doesn't sound like the funniest part of my day but bear with me."

He held up a hand in front of her face, not that she seemed to notice that either, though perhaps more legitimately. He interrupted her all the same. "Oh, no, now that's where you're wrong. This is already hilarious. You didn't know what was going on? I catch both of you just seconds after you stuffed an unconscious Jack Noir into a shuttle on autopilot and you expected me to what, break into applause?"

> "Curvy stick"? I chose to describe Karkat's sickle as a "curvy stick"? As if it wasn't hard enough to tell what was going on here, I decide to describe a metal instrument as a "stick?" Well, just to clarify what's going on, it appears Karkat caught on to the exiling at the last second and attacked the girls. But it gets more complicated in the next paragraph, where it appears he didn't know it was them and… ugh. Why I wrote this so obtusely I do not know.

"But then," she said, pushing aside his hand with a spread of her arms and cutting him off before he could say more, "But then, when you had me down and you could see my face, you're all like 'I thought you were an imp,' with this like, totally devastated tone in your voice?" He couldn't help it, he actually growled at her, but he knew it wasn't half going to be enough to shut her up. "And then I got it! It was all just a mistake, and you never meant to attack me and it was funny!" She clapped her hands once, and then leaned forward with her shark-grin leering at him. "And then, ooh, and then, you locked me up and went to try to catch Vriska, and that pain, you know, in my chest? Came back, squeezed really, really hard? And then…" She make a spreading gesture with her hand. "Nothing! And that was the worst part of my day. So glad you asked, by the way."

"Hey!" he snapped, pointing a finger in her face. "What do you… where do you get off with… HOW DO YOU THINK I WAS FEELING WH—"

"And then," she finished, rocking on the balls of her feet. "Then she kicked your ass." Karkat shut up just to stare at her in astonishment, and realized all at once that he had completely forgotten with whom he was dealing, and what she was capable of. "See?" she said, and counted off: "Funniest, worst, best."

"You can't honestly have expected me to just let you get away with that," he said, in what passed for him as a hushed voice, something closer to a normal speaking tone.

She shrugged, her tone slipping a touch as honesty slipped between the cracks in an emotional surge. "I was trusting you to trust me. I trust my ears and nose and tongue to see for me…" At that point it had occurred to her that she had not meant to say any of that out loud, without obfuscation or misdirection. She wrapped up quickly: "...I thought I could trust you, too."

"All you had to do was tell me," he muttered. "Email, write all over one of my memos, fuck! 'H3Y K4RK4T IM GONN4 GO RU1N 3V3RYTH1NG YOUVE B33N WORK1NG FOR M4YB3 W3 SHOULD H4V3 A L1TTLE T4LK 4BOUT 1T.'"

> The section "Email, write all over one of my memos, fuck!" was written after Terezi and Karkat actually did talk in canon, agreeing with Hussie that that's all they needed to sort this out. Funny how that happens. There's another line I added for the same reason in the paragraph below.

There it was. The perfect opening. All she had to do now was to hit him back at just the right angle and he would collapse under the weight of his own ego, though the cost was high. In leaving himself vulnerable he had struck a blow of his own. She could not argue with his actual point. It was true, all she should have done was to talk to him, have let herself be open for just a few minutes, and it would have been a better day. But it was too late for that now, and she had never, never gotten into an argument she intended to lose, not even when the other Troll was right.

"Everything you've been working for? That's funny, last I saw there were twelve of us. And that's the real joke, Karkat, you still think this is all about you. Well I've got news for you: you're a petty, whiny grub."

"Oh, big words," he replied, "coming from—"

"You're a self-absorbed rage case—" they were talking at once "—with so little charm and charisma that you couldn't lead Gamzee to a fireworks display!"

> As much as I like that line, the way I try to communicate the two talking over one another just does not work in my mind. They say you understand your own writing too well to edit it effectively, and so I say that when you don't understand your own writing, you've got a problem you should probably address with fire.

She had only raised her voice a few levels. He, on the other hand, was spitting, almost frothing with every word she poured on, as his fists trembled. "…uppity little do-nothing so obsessed with her fantasy future that she doesn't recognize real emotion when it reaches out and and—"

"And through all of this it's become," she laughed derisively, "pretty obvious that if anyone dies before this is over the only one responsible would be you!"

So he hit her. The swing she had expected, in fact it was the very target of her goading, but neither of them actually expected him to connect. His fist cut across her right cheek in spite of her best efforts. She was already fast and every rung of the echeladder put her hand in the way all the faster, but she had underestimated just how much one got to climb for exiling the Black Queen. All the same, she caught his arm a second too late, seizing him by the arm, fluid despite the injury. They stood in tableau for a good while, both shocked dead by what they had see clear-coming, until Terezi reached up with her free hand and lowered her shades, meeting his eyes with two blasted pupils drowned in milky jaundice. Karkat tried not to meet those eyes. He remembered when he last had, hands sweaty, surrounded in a field of blast-shattered grist and everything right in the world. But now, while her face spoke a cold-stunned mix of emotion, her eyes stared vacant and he could not look at them. Not after the punch, now that they had crossed all bounds of Pity.

Softly, she whispered, "…I win."

She twisted his arm at an angle it did not want to go and he fell with a cry to his knees as she began to laugh, at first so hysterical in victory – having provoked him to a blind lunge off the precipice of ordered debate – that she had need to catch her breath. When she had finished she repaid him across the face with a backhand and he had to brace himself to keep from hitting the ground. Her laughter returned, now throaty and dark, from manic before to purely intentional. She took ahold of her cane off the loop of her wrist and pressed it to his chest until he lay upon the floor with her looking down from above. Foot replaced cane, the latter striking to the floor aside his ear and bearing her weight, and a triumphant grin of off-stained teeth replaced the laughs, leaving them in a heavy silence.

"What the hell is wrong with you?" he shouted to break it, which made her laugh all over again.

She smiled even broader. "Tit for tat, Karkat, and what the hell is wrong with you? Where's the Karkat I used to know, or did he go snoozing off home to Alternia tucked next to your better half? Besides, can't a girl have a L1TTLE FUN, K4RK4T?" She leaned slightly forward, the weight on her foot pressing down on his chest. "You got to get up and play His Tyranny for little old me, but I think it's time to stop being who we're not. If you wasn't honest with myself, I'd jUsT gO cRaZy!"

> Some of Terezi's best lines in this are about the actual plot of _Musical Thrones_ , which was a shame when I was rewriting. I think it's funny how she's about to do what she's about to do but is still addressing Jack/Spades as Karkat's "better half."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean you're no judge, Karkat. You stood up there just waiting for the evidence to match your conclusion. Any grub can do that. If you were a real judge you'd have hit me with the sentence before you locked eyes on me but you just don't have the horns for command."

Karkat scowled and picked at the side of his head. "I'm sorry, say that last part again, I think I had some 'you're a fucking bitch' stuck in my ear." He pointed his finger into her face and shouted: "I can damn well do anything I want and there's nothing you can—"

"THEN GET UP HERE!" she said in her mimic of his Trollian voice, stepping off his chest and clasping the hand he had been using to gesture. She crouched down low and he felt her breath on his face. "Get up here, and show me you actually deserve to sit there and call me a traitor, you wriggling coward!"

And she stood up and jerked his arm, tossing him one-handed such that she caught him again behind the neck, just as he gripped her had by the back of the head and they pulled one another into a kiss of spades. Lips locked and grips tightened, most of his weight on hers and hers heavily weighted onto her cane. His free hand grabbed up and clutched at her side, a free-flow of energy jumping hot between them as a dry voice in the back of Karkat's mind growled over coursing hormones and blinding emotion.

> I spend way too much time in this section discussing the logistics of how the two are posed. I originally figured that it was too uncomfortable a pose for me to not, and that if I didn't go into detail, someone would have called me out on it, but it wasn't really that hard to trim it down for _Hands_  
> 

" **So good to see,** " it said, " **that this is how you put up with the crooks… that banish your friends to crazy barren ash-worlds. Just saying. Oh no, by all means, carry on.** "

> Spades, why are you using caps, you don't use caps. Moreover, it's been so long since we had Exile voices in this comic that I actually forgot what the fic was trying to do in this paragraph when I was working on the _Hands_ version. Very awkward.

> Our new couple gets particularly florid during the next few paragraphs.

Karkat did his best to ignore the voice and pulled back, just enough, his lips a hair's breadth from hers and only far enough to say: "Terezi…"

"I hoped that was what you wanted…" she cooed back past a malicious smile.

"Oh yeah, all of it," he said, gently stroking one of her horns with the tip of his finger.

She cracked another smile. "All of it? You wanted to kiss me and," she said, squeezing the back of his neck, "get dipped like a girl while doing it?"

"No," he whispered. He nuzzled his way up her face, tracing a line along her jaw with his nose. "I wanted to kiss you… after you were guilty and grovelling for mercy at my feet."

> My reason for these lines was to add to the sense of "this style of relationship is anathema to our own and this needs to be emphasized by contrast", which works in other parts of the sequence but not right here. Terezi and Karkat are actually both quite very florid people when they want to, but it just wasn't reading well. This is like a section of one of Karkat's romance novels in between serious portrayals of "these two teenagers are deliberately hurting one another emotionally and physically", and while that might make sense for him, it wasn't suiting my purposes. In _Hands_ , I had Terezi mention her dragon after pages without and Karkat simply tells her to fuck off. By that point in the chapter, he realizes this was never really about Terezi's dragon (and said so himself) and honestly doesn't want to fucking hear about it. In this fic, the attack that follows reads like another play in a game of one-upmanship, which they subsequently talk about. In _Hands_ , it reads more like an ordinary kismesis interaction, though after doing so they don't feel comfortable with the physical violence (considering their extensive history), and so talk about it in a different direction.

She raised an eyebrow, knowing him too well to be surprised by his tone, but before she could finish saying "Like hell—" Karkat had his right arm off from gripping the side of her t-shirt to knock away the cane as he simultaneously kicked out a leg, and he pulled her crashing to the ground. His arm caught the fall; hers did not, and she shouted aloud in pain. Groaning, she curled to one side inadvertently to coddle it, rolling up into his side in an awful mockery of matesprit closeness. He could not help it: it was his turn to laugh. She was right. Being honest was liberating.

"Is this how it's going to be, you big expert?" she asked into her arm once they had had a chance to rest. Her hair had fallen across her face and she pushed some of it aside with her now only good hand. She captchalogued her glasses as she did, looking up to his eyes as best she could with her own. A teal bruise was beginning to flower along her face where he had first hit her, and no doubt he was developing his own. "You and me just…" she rolled away, onto her back just beside him, "…fighting to see who gets to be in charge and never really winning till… till hell, Karkat, whenever this goes?"

"Sure, I mean, whenever you want, you just throw a fist my way, I'll block it, we'll make a big mess of the place, how's that sound? But most kismets play mind games, I figure you'll like that."

>   
> _Screeeeeeeech-halt_. Oh god. "Kismets". Hey, take a close look at the gigantic comic we've all read. You'll see "matesprites" and "moirails", and the mediator in an auspistice is called the "auspistice", but you'll get no such plurals for the blackroms. In my other fics and even in general conversation, I now use "Kismeses", and everyone seems to get what I mean, but back then I for some reason chose to go with "kismets". My reasoning was this: if "kismesis" is a compound of "kismet nemesis", I was using "kismets" to mean "two united by kismet." What a stretch. I mean… wow.

"As for your coy little 'whenever this goes,' you're way too much of a huge bitch for me to imagine I'd start gunning for someone else, if that's what you're panicked about. Give me some credit."

"Good," she whispered, and then in either honest speed or reckless disregard for her the arm on which she rolled, she went roundabout and slammed her fist just off the side of his nose.

> He punched her, she backhanded him. He kicked her leg out, she punched him. Terezi keeps a careful account. In _Hands_ , their discussion about not hitting one another sinks in much faster and there is no fourth blow. That said, she probably tripped him later or something, I can't see her keeping any less careful an account in that universe than this.

He cried out as she calmly stepped over, straddled his legs and checked her leg for injuries of her own – a teal scrape and nothing worse. She lay down, settling her elbows on his chest and waited for him to calm down and scowl at her again. "Just a warning," she said, head cupped in her hands, "I play mean."

He rubbed his face furiously with his sleeve to clean up blood that wasn't there. "Thank god, if you didn't play mean I'd think you were sick."

She traced a finger along his cheek with a frown. "God I missed you."

> This is Karkat's line in _Hands_ , dramatically changing its meaning, casting a light on his own motivations and questioning why he didn't go to talk to her earlier in the fic. Was his apathy simply a mistake, in some way? Were his feelings black and he just didn't realize? Was he more upset than he seemed and is just glad to have her back, not caring about the quadrant in a way the Human characters can't understand? Terezi could have said the line as well, but in _Hands_ it would have just made her seem needy. He screwed over her in that fic, and to suddenly cave to him wouldn't have worked. While I wouldn't say that Terezi isn't emotionally attached to Karkat in _Hands_ , her motivation was revenge, humiliation and hate. She had the impetus, he had the attachment. It remains to be seen if either will last, and if they do or don't, how the results will play out for both of them.

> That said, for the moment the two seem to have settled down into a certain weird comfort. This is a consistency in my depictions of kismesis. Venting off their excess natural (or perhaps cultural) impulses, characters like Equius and Aradia in [Your Weight in Candy Corn Liquor](http://archiveofourown.org/works/271781) (M-rated) seem not just level with one another but raise one another up in the process (in _Candy Corn Liquor_ , despite being at a high-society party, Equius does not behave as reasonably, maturely or as adult at any other point in the fic than when he's with Aradia. This was to remain true during his heart-to-heart with Nepeta, which is to laud both behaviours). To look at it from another angle, take the kismesis in [Suffocation](http://archiveofourown.org/works/162466) (M; Non-con (Drones)) who makes a very generous offer at the end, in spite of his otherwise open animosity with the reader's character, which the reader's character somewhat echoes earlier on by refusing to degrade the kismesis even in their mind as the cast huddles together in terror of the Drones. Balance, venting, respect.

> All that above is not to say all the kismesis in my fics have been this balanced, but the others haven't exactly been healthy, which I suppose is the distinction. Ese has Mer at knifepoint at the start of their "relationship" (via Lon) in [The Tale of the Bowyer](http://archiveofourown.org/works/237651) and just murdered his father in front of him, so I sort of have my doubts that that was going to be a very healthy relationship, and I'm not honestly sure Ese would have wanted it any other way. But fairy tales are messed up like that. The Empress in _Hands_ keeps her kismesis dragged along behind her in chains to public appearances – of course, that's ostensibly because he's a prisoner of the state, but the humiliation was probably not a legal stipulation here. Not that he seems to mind – probably looking for a good opening to make a run for it. Heck, I can throw in one more to weigh things in favour of unbalanced kismesises: The author in my failed drabble-fic _Shrapnel_ was going to essentially feed his kismesis and anyone he brought with him to a Horrorterror, Lovecraft-style. Of course, that might not entirely be his fault – it wasn't going to be clear if he was actually writing the notes under duress, mind control or even free will, what with the forced word limit and all.

> The final line, below, touches on a theme I barely touched on here but does exist. My plans have reincorporated it into _Hands_ ' second draft. And all independently of reading this fic in the first place! Who knew.

He reached up and pulled her down to him, no preposterous lifting stunt in their way, hands free to hold, teeth to bite; a chance to do what kismets do, before they know better. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Commentary version continues in [this chapter](http://archiveofourown.org/works/476584/chapters/836182).


	3. Hearts Flush

It was easy to get lost in Prospit, so that was ultimately all they managed to accomplish, having flown aimlessly in uninterrupted conversation. They had made a promise: keep to the ground and take as long as it needed, saying without saying that they wanted to eke out another hour, another, just one more before they had to say goodnight. It was a stupid game, considering they would have gladly just talked and laughed and sat hand in hand, tucked tight together inside a link of the golden chain, just like they did when they found their way to it and ran out of silly excuses. But some obstacles stood taller than chemistry and a wonderful evening, some walls that had best be climbed than vaulted, and their hands slipped apart at his window.

"You know," he said, leaning against the post of his alchemiter as she sat down with a sigh on the inside sill, "I know there's not much to see here but that doesn't mean you can't come in. I could probably, like, alchemize a chair."

Sheepishly, she started aimlessly braiding her hair, pulling it out from under her. "It's not that."

His face fell. "What, what's the matter?"

"It's nothing, I just think I should be going home. It's a long flight." She continued to braid, tying up two strands of hair from opposite sides of her right horn. She was so intent on keeping her eyes low that she began to lose focus on her hands even as she watched them work, short nail-claws threading through strands and the whole attempt collapsing into a fumbled mess.

"Well… goodnight?" he said. "I had a great time, just the two of us, and I thought you wanted to see that picture of grub Gamzee and Karkat playing in the mud, but sure, if you're in a hurry or…" She looked almost as though she was wincing at ever word. "…stuff." 

"…Look, it's just…" she sighed. "Look, I'll just put it right out there, really fast, because I'm just being a downer on the whole night. Okay, here goes." She did her best to put on her Serious Face. "I just got out of a real, real serious Pale relationship, and then… well, I mean, you've seen what happened. He's not exactly what I'd call 'taking it well.' And I know it's not fair but this is all way too much at once. I'm starting to feel it's all just going to get worse if I don't go home soon. And I don't… Is that stupid? That's stupid."

"Hey," he said, floating over, "you don't have to explain it to me. I mean, I'm the king of arbitrary lines in the sand. They all look up to me and go, 'Oh, there's the guy that drew me because he couldn't take Tavros, Karkat and Kanaya talking about Innocent-Teenager-Emblematic-Of-Intended-Core-Demographic-Peppered-With-Largely-Superficial-Flaws-Falls-In-Flushed-Relationships—" He was going full-blast, she could not help but smile a little. "-With-A-Variety-Of-Supernatural-And-Unusual-Matesprits-Including-An-Alien-An-Imperial-Drone-And-Especially-A-Rainbow-Drinker-Who-Fight-Against-Her-Wishes-In-Low-Budget-But-High-Flying-Fight-Scenes for one more damned second, so he told them they only get to talk about it once a day.'"

"Aww!" she said. "They drove you so crazy you memorized the title!"

He sighed. "No, no, it's okay. Kanaya warned me, you can say it."

She threw her arms into the air. "It's the best movie ever!" She almost bounced on her seat in excitement. "The plot is amazing, the romantic plots are each so balanced and the guys are _so hot_ , and the if Kanaya still has her copy we're all going to have to school everyone together, and we'll get to show Nepeta! She'll cry, but Karkat will cry _more_ and he's already _seen_ it." She slapped her knees. "And you'll just have to sit there looking all cute and flustered!"

"Ugh…" he said, trying to hide his horror by floating about, adjusting his shades as she chased his free hand with her fingertips.

"Yeah," she said between giggles. "Like that."

Sighing, he turned back and, seeing her outstretched hand, took it and returned to her. Through his window she had the whole of glowing Prospit to frame her, clad in Dersian contrast, with hair over one shoulder and all the dreamselves' cheating magic to crop out dirt and battle-scars and leave instead a face and form as you would dream to see. So she was drawn, lit and shaded straight from a dream, with all the romance that would imply, but coupled and shackled by the wavering incorporeality of dreams that says "yes, but soon gone."

As a result, he could really see where she was coming from, even without the trouble going on in their lives. That underlying sense of an artificial dream had clung to his buried consciousness, casting the night, to use her metaphor, like a bubble set to burst, until just there, when something too subtly real for the clumsy hands of dreams, or too foolishly real for their overwrought or surrealist pens, anchored "this is you."

"You're gorgeous when you smile," slipped out.

She immediately blushed, almost taken aback by his sincerity and the conversation's shift in tone. "Th-thank you."

"I… I mean, well… ah dammit." He shifted and might very well have turn away, had she not held him down, "I mean, you're always pretty, and… _hell_ … and I wasn't trying to undermine what you were saying, uh, before and well, I just—"

"Hey, hey!" she said, giving his hand a squeeze. "I know what you meant. And come on, I know what you didn't mean. And I," she laughed, a touch artificial, but all the same his hand stopped its nervous trembling. "And I'm glad you're concerned about my feelings but don't freak out. I mean," she had her own nervous break, eyes flicking away. "I've been having the best… the best… here," she said, gesturing errantly behind her toward Prospit. "With you. And I don't think that you'd start being stupid now."

That hung in the air between them, neither entirely sure what they could add or even what they would have expected from the other, eyes locked. "I should… go." In time, she slipped her hand from his and he let her loose, at least, at first.

"Yeah," he said, tracing his hand up from their parted fingertips, past her wrist and fighter-light up her arm. "I know how hard it can be when you need to put your foot down, when it's all… well…" He brushed her hair away from her face and stroked her cheek up the frill on the side of her head. Shocks of magenta flushed across her face. "When everything's so—"

"\---EXCITING," she cut in in a whisper, having seen he was going. A mutual smile teased at their lips as they brushed, met and held a soft kiss by the window sill.

"W-wait," she stammered, and pulled back.

"What is it?" he asked watching at first with embarrassment and then confusion as she turned and cocked her head this way and that.

"Did you…" she started, bafflement in her eyes. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear wh—"

* * *

"MOTHER _FUCKER!_ "

"Hahahahahaha, what?"

" _I_ don't know, what the hell did you just do?"

A gasp. "I found a pressure point! Look at us, we're BOND1NG!!!"

And Feferi woke up to morning breath and voices.


	4. Hearts Flush (Commentary)

It was easy to get lost in Prospit, so that was ultimately all they managed to accomplish, having flown aimlessly in uninterrupted conversation. They had made a promise: keep to the ground and take as long as it needed, saying without saying that they wanted to eke out another hour, another, just one more before they had to say goodnight. It was a stupid game, considering they would have gladly just talked and laughed and sat hand in hand, tucked tight together inside a link of the golden chain, just like they did when they found their way to it and ran out of silly excuses. But some obstacles stood taller than chemistry and a wonderful evening, some walls that had best be climbed than vaulted, and their hands slipped apart at his window.

> So this chapter is pretty much just Feferi/Sollux for the sake of it. As I said before, the whole fic was completed at this point (actually, thinking of it, some of it might not have been done until this point), but I hadn't yet decided to carry over my personal chapter break rules (like "finish what you're talking about") to my fanfiction, and so split things up by what I felt was fanfiction's rules of chapter breaks instead. Focusing on a new ship? Welp, cut that sucker up! This chapter is pathetically small and nothing really happens expect to establish Feferi's motive for later, and honestly, she could have gone with a motive like "I would like everyone to not die just because they don't have Karkat to strong-arm them into sticking together anymore." By the way, the title was me desperately trying to come up with card jokes to go with the first's. It didn't make it to Chapter 3.

> Reading me being descriptive and florid like in that last paragraph is interesting because you can actually watch me become less comprehensible as I go. I actually remember not being sure how to communicate the sentiment expressed in "some walls that had best be climbed than vaulted", but I can tell you this: I did not make the right choice. That said, the idea of Feferi and Sollux just sitting around in the giant Prospit chain is kind of adorable.

"You know," he said, leaning against the post of his alchemiter as she sat down with a sigh on the inside sill, "I know there's not much to see here but that doesn't mean you can't come in. I could probably, like, alchemize a chair."

Sheepishly, she started aimlessly braiding her hair, pulling it out from under her. "It's not that."

His face fell. "What, what's the matter?"

"It's nothing, I just think I should be going home. It's a long flight." She continued to braid, tying up two strands of hair from opposite sides of her right horn. She was so intent on keeping her eyes low that she began to lose focus on her hands even as she watched them work, short nail-claws threading through strands and the whole attempt collapsing into a fumbled mess.

> Looks like _Musical Thrones_ trolls have "claws" (of course, this was changed to just post-moult female Trolls in _Hands_ ). The mention of the horn here was because no one was ever mentioning the horns in their fics. Ever. They were gray-skinned teenagers with funny blood full stop. I think you could write reams of fics about the consequences of horns, much less just hair care. The fandom would prefer to make them an erogenous zone.

"Well… goodnight?" he said. "I had a great time, just the two of us, and I thought you wanted to see that picture of grub Gamzee and Karkat playing in the mud, but sure, if you're in a hurry or…" She looked almost as though she was wincing at ever word. "…stuff."

> Wow, okay, I don't recall that line at all. That happens all the time but it was only like two months until I wrote _Grublings_ , you'd think some previous mentions of young Trolls (in this case, I think I meant metamorphosed-toddler young) would have stuck with me.

"…Look, it's just…" she sighed. "Look, I'll just put it right out there, really fast, because I'm just being a downer on the whole night. Okay, here goes." She did her best to put on her Serious Face. "I just got out of a real, real serious Pale relationship, and then… well, I mean, you've seen what happened. He's not exactly what I'd call 'taking it well.' And I know it's not fair but this is all way too much at once. I'm starting to feel it's all just going to get worse if I don't go home soon. And I don't… Is that stupid? That's stupid."

> While Sollux doesn't read like Sollux at all (my Sollux voice stinks but this is way off), Feferi sounds close to herself. Now, this was put up the day after [S] Make Her Pay, so I'm not sure if I amended it to account for my new knowledge that Eridan was planning on duelling Sollux, but probably not, because at that point we didn't know why they had duelled at all (heck, we still don't). Frankly, after I first watched the flash, I had assumed they were both attacking the same Underling and I had just missed it bursting into grist; it took a rewatch to work out that whoa, hey, infighting. While I certainly had things straight by the time this went up, it still wasn't clear why they were fighting ("stupid reasons") for a while, so I think Fef in the fic here is just talking about Eridan moping in pesterlogs before that.

> Of course, you can see "my" Feferi, as I've been calling my mischaracterization in _Hands_ , poking through here, since I knew what she'd be doing in just a few pages. It wasn't clear at the time why no one was visiting Eridan, since he wouldn't bring up the angels for some time, so I just threw in a line foreshadowing her politically minded nature. After all, at the time I was in this absolutely stupid prediction mindset that "unite the races" didn't mean Trolls and Humans, but Red Team and Blue Team. Feferi and Eridan hadn't done anything yet, so with my guess that there was going to be a plot introduced soon to carry us through Sgrub, I assumed she would be patching conflict and he would be creating it, and ten of the Trolls would be up to something. Keep that in mind for the end of this fic when we see Eridan creating trouble.

> If anyone's wondering what I expected from the other two do-nothing Trolls, I figured Equius would die from pretty much the moment moirallegience was explained to us, and I'm afraid I had no higher hopes for him at any point because the foreshadowing was too thick. But I misread it all the same: you'll note that in _Hands_ , I hint that I figured Nepeta was the one that needed the moirail to keep from being openly violent, since Equius has distractions of his own. I figured someone (the demon, that is; Jack) would kill Equius and she would go berserk. Except, you know, effectively. I was just wrong about "effectively." I suppose she filled the role Gamzee came to fill (harmless character actually extremely dangerous, might murder other characters), so maybe I just had my foreshadowing wires crossed (oh, hey, did I mention that, until he killed her, my only Homestuck ship had been Nepeta/Gamzee? Yeah. Yeah.). Actually, I was right about Eridan too, so not bad.

"Hey," he said, floating over, "you don't have to explain it to me. I mean, I'm the king of arbitrary lines in the sand. They all look up to me and go, 'Oh, there's the guy that drew me because he couldn't take Tavros, Karkat and Kanaya talking about Innocent-Teenager-Emblematic-Of-Intended-Core-Demographic-Peppered-With-Largely-Superficial-Flaws-Falls-In-Flushed-Relationships—"

> Was _Trollight_ in this fic too? Why does looking back at my fanfic record make me look like I'm obsessed with a movie I just made up?

He was going full-blast, she could not help but smile a little. "-With-A-Variety-Of-Supernatural-And-Unusual-Matesprits-Including-An-Alien-An-Imperial-Drone-And-Especially-A-Rainbow-Drinker-Who-Fight-Against-Her-Wishes-In-Low-Budget-But-High-Flying-Fight-Scenes for one more damned second, so he told them they only get to talk about it once a day.'"

"Aww!" she said. "They drove you so crazy you memorized the title!"

He sighed. "No, no, it's okay. Kanaya warned me, you can say it."

She threw her arms into the air. "It's the best movie ever!" She almost bounced on her seat in excitement. "The plot is amazing, the romantic plots are each so balanced and the guys are _so hot_ , and the if Kanaya still has her copy we're all going to have to school everyone together, and we'll get to show Nepeta! She'll cry, but Karkat will cry _more_ and he's already _seen_ it." She slapped her knees. "And you'll just have to sit there looking all cute and flustered!"

> Feferi's on Team Jacob. I'd say "Team Troll Jacob" but I'm pretty sure, in the original draft of _Hands_ , Jacob was actually (gasp!) an Imperial Drone. I'm… not sure how you hide that fact from your schoolmates.

"Ugh…" he said, trying to hide his horror by floating about, adjusting his shades as she chased his free hand with her fingertips.

"Yeah," she said between giggles. "Like that."

Sighing, he turned back and, seeing her outstretched hand, took it and returned to her. Through his window she had the whole of glowing Prospit to frame her,

> Heeeeere I go again.

clad in Dersian contrast, with hair over one shoulder and all the dreamselves' cheating magic to crop out dirt and battle-scars and leave instead a face and form as you would dream to see. So she was drawn, lit and shaded straight from a dream, with all the romance that would imply, but coupled and shackled by the wavering incorporeality of dreams that says "yes, but soon gone."

As a result, he could really see where she was coming from, even without the trouble going on in their lives. That underlying sense of an artificial dream had clung to his buried consciousness, casting the night, to use her metaphor, like a bubble set to burst, until just there, when something too subtly real for the clumsy hands of dreams, or too foolishly real for their overwrought or surrealist pens, anchored "this is you."

> That's a nice sentiment, past me, but could you not bury it in this insipid quagmire? Thank you. "Incorporeality." _Damn._  
> 

> But I just… can't… _fix it_. You ever tried to rework a paragraph but keep ending up with the same problems?

> Sighing, he turned back and, seeing her outstretched hand, took it and looked to her face. Her smile teasing and happy and it was a remarkable sight. Through his window she had the whole of glowing Prospit to frame her, clad in Dersite contrast, with hair over one shoulder and face bright and perfect in the cheating way of dreams. And in that cheating way, she was beautiful, but it was unreal and he knew it: a poor mirage spun from the transient thread of dreams, soon gone, like a bubble set to burst. But that evil little smile, or the rough feel of her nails on his hand, broke through. They were things too subtly real for the clumsy hands of a dream, or maybe too foolishly real for its overwrought, surrealist pen, and it anchored "this is you."

> Yeah.

"You're gorgeous when you smile," slipped out.

She immediately blushed, almost taken aback by his sincerity and the conversation's shift in tone. "Th-thank you."

"I… I mean, well… ah dammit." He shifted and might very well have turn away, had she not held him down, "I mean, you're always pretty, and… _hell_ … and I wasn't trying to undermine what you were saying, uh, before and well, I just—"

"Hey, hey!" she said, giving his hand a squeeze. "I know what you meant. And come on, I know what you didn't mean. And I," she laughed, a touch artificial, but all the same his hand stopped its nervous trembling. "And I'm glad you're concerned about my feelings but don't freak out. I mean," she had her own nervous break, eyes flicking away. "I've been having the best… the best… here," she said, gesturing errantly behind her toward Prospit. "With you. And I don't think that you'd start being stupid now."

> Changed a bit here to make the meaning more clear. The line is supposed to read that Feferi is complimenting the entire date via its location, as she tries to find the courage to say what she really means: "With you". Unfortunately, "here" just reads like a transition and I can't figure out how to fix it either.

That hung in the air between them, neither entirely sure what they could add or even what they would have expected from the other, eyes locked. "I should… go." In time, she slipped her hand from his and he let her loose, at least, at first.

"Yeah," he said, tracing his hand up from their parted fingertips, past her wrist and fighter-light up her arm. "I know how hard it can be when you need to put your foot down, when it's all… well…" He brushed her hair away from her face and stroked her cheek up the frill on the side of her head. Shocks of magenta flushed across her face. "When everything's so—"

"\---EXCITING," she cut in in a whisper, having seen he was going. A mutual smile teased at their lips as they brushed, met and held a soft kiss by the window sill.

"W-wait," she stammered, and pulled back.

"What is it?" he asked watching at first with embarrassment and then confusion as she turned and cocked her head this way and that.

"Did you…" she started, bafflement in her eyes. "Did you hear that?"

"Hear wh—"

* * *

"MOTHER _FUCKER!_ "

"Hahahahahaha, what?"

" _I_ don't know, what the hell did you just do?"

A gasp. "I found a pressure point! Look at us, we're BOND1NG!!!"

> I think when I was originally writing this fic, there were a few lines I just wanted to see in print and so wrote the entire fic against my better judgement in spite of not being in a fandom for years. Some of the ones involved include much of the exchange in chapter 1, the line about "this is you" no matter how awful, and yes, right there. I have got to work that "bonding" line back into _Hands_.

And Feferi woke up to morning breath and voices. 


	5. Reality Would Like to Welcome You Home

Feferi woke up to morning breath and voices, her arms sore from being stuck under hear head the whole night long. She felt a foot kick her leg as Gamzee, still asleep across from her, tossed in his yet-ongoing uneasy sleep. Turning, she sloughed through the sopor slime to find the source of all the fuss.

"Karkat!" she shrieked. " _What_ the _hell_?"

He lay on his back with Terezi still on top of him, a streak of shimmering teal on the carpet beside the aggravated wound on her left leg, their fingersnails scuffed teal and red, opposing, and both their faces spoke more or less to the details of their altercation. A sheepish grin on one face and a snarl on the other, both could be afforded only just about as much dignity as respective onlookers might be willing to afford to someone lying on the ground, clothes speckled with mixed blood. Karkat aggressively defended a spot near his collar.

"Hi Feferi!" Terezi called. "When did you get here?"

"Me?" Feferi shut her eyes in vague hope that this would all prove to be some sort of left-field, actual dream. No luck. "I've been asleep here for hours, I was about ask you the same question."

Terezi gasped. "Karkat! …Were we not _alone_?"

"Oh, please shut the fuck up."

Feferi collected her tiara from the side of the recouperacoon, stood up and began to wipe away slime, which slurped and burped as she left it, and began tugging the stuff out of tangles in her hair and wiping it off of her bathing suit in dollops. "Karkat, I'm serious, I leave you in charge for one evening of peace and quiet and this… if there are any important emails from the others, I'm not going to let you hear the end of it."

Terezi tickled her fingers across Karkat's chest in an oh-too-obvious ploy to sneak back to his pressure point. "Oh, I don't think I've been keeping him that busy."

"Like hell," Karkat interrupted before she could go any further, both verbally and physically. "She's exiled Jack Noir."

Feferi, who had been stepping out of the cocoon, slipped and only barely managed to catch herself thanks to a lucky lodge of her foot on Gamzee, who muttered "N-never gonna… catch me…" and continued sleeping. Feferi caught her breath, took both feet on solid ground and approached the both of them on the floor.

"What?" she demanded from above.

"She and Vriska knocked him out and put him on a shuttle. And they've destroyed the Black Ring."

She set her teeth. "Where's…" But her natural Troll-fury came to a stop when she took a moment to absorb the scene in front of her once again, and she returned with a stammer. "W-wait. Wait a minute. Karkat, is…" She pointed to the both of them. "Is this your idea of a punishment?"

"I know!" Terezi said with a shriek of laughter. "I thought he had a higher opinion of himself, too!"

Karkat made a face so tweaked Feferi knew she had to move on. "Where's Vriska?"

His face returned to simple, everyday rage. "Hell if I know, what am I, your newstroll?"

"Yes!" She stomped her foot, less out of immaturity and more because it was so close to his face. "Because I asked you to keep me up to date on things while I slept! Terezi—"

"Well she's not going to tell you shit," Karkat said, flicking at one of Terezi's horns.

"It's true," she admitted, sombrely.

"Look," Karkat said, "all I know is that she got away and she's completely off the network. I'm not even seeing memos from Future Her any more. It's like the timeline spat her out… or all of us."

Feferi discovered that she was getting a headache in about the fastest time she had ever experienced. Waking up this morning was proving to be quite the dive into ice water.

The pulsing tic of truebred Troll rage ticked in her head, but she put out her dignity and carefully selected her next words: "Terezi, I'd don't think I've ever seen a servant of the law so… defiant of authority."

"Well, you see, Karkat and I just wrapped up a really long discussion about his authority a minute or two before you—"

With a flick of her wrist and a lightning crack, the [Psii]don's Entente appeared in Feferi's right hand and she slammed it down to the ground, impaling the carpet. Terezi's face fell when she realized at what she was looking, and followed it up to Feferi's eyes and a Serious Face that did not at all need to be forced.

"…Sand and Zephyr," she answered. "Vriska said she'd grab Tavros and… I don't know." When Feferi did not relent, she insisted: "That's all I know!"

"Why?"

Terezi's dead eyes fell. "Would either of you believe this is for all our goods?"

"Can you prove it?"

"…No."

Feferi yanked out her trident and walked around them, snapping the rest of her clothes off of a hook as she went. "I'm checking Trollian. If I find out that the others have gotten into trouble while you were rolling around trying to stab each other, you're not going to hear the end of it, Karkat!"

"Terrified," he replied with a shaking gesture from his hand, and then: "Ow! What was that for?"

"H3H3H3H3H3H3…"

The computers were set up in an arc, forming a cubicle of laptops, spider-legged consoles and worse. Terezi's computer had a brick on top of it, Feferi had no idea where from, and Gamzee's sat unattended (she knew better than to bother it as it had the loudest startup noise she could imagine), but both hers and Karkat's were on, each with unread messages. As much as she wanted to see if she had to get on Karkat's case as soon as possible, she started with her own. Settling down in front of the arc, she really had no idea exactly what she was going to get into.

> centaursTesticle [CT] began trolling cuttlefishCuller [CC], caligulasAquarium [CA], terminallyCapricious [TC] and carcinoGeneticist [CG]:
> 
> CT: D --> To all those it may concern in the upper echelons of command,  
>  CT: D --> And also Vantas,  
>  CT: D --> My team has made contact with the Sylph and is proceeding in a general sweep of the dry sectors of LODAG.  
>  CT: D --> No sign of Lord Amphora.  
>  CT: D --> Any reply from him about where to 100k would be, as usual, very helpful.  
>  CT: D --> Nothing? Alright, I don't know exactly what I was expecting.  
>  CT: D --> I would like to repeat my complaint that there is no need to babysit a fully capable royal.  
>  CT: D --> Especially on orders from the grey-toned mystery rung of command.  
>  CT: D --> My team will continue its sweep despite my apprehensions, at least until I am relieved from Karkat's elusive-waterfowl hunt by the de jure.  
>  CT: D --> Nepeta has already broken her wrist in this farce during an encounter with a quad-prototyped lich.  
>  CT: D --> The princess' 100susprite has graciously volunteered to protect her while the three of us move on.  
>  CT: D --> Although,  
>  CT: D --> I would like to voice a concern that such a powerful creature was prototyped after we already knew the advantage given to our foes.  
>  CT: D --> Respectfully.  
>  CT: D --> Though it now occurs to me that the princess' server player bears more of the responsibility.  
>  CT: D --> Yes, I do think that best explains where to assign the blame.  
>  CT: D --> I digress. Patrolling now, do not expect much trouble.

Feferi certainly was not going to put up with having to answer _that_ first thing in the morning. Besides, the entire post had been made not long after she had fallen asleep, so there was no real urgency, and as much as she hated to admit it to herself, no real surprise to find that Eridan was still missing. That was all in her messages, although Karkat had a number more, much to her chagrin.

> arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]:
> 
> AG: Hey Karkat  
>  AG: What's gray online 8ut red all over?  
>  AG: Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahahahaahahahah!  
>  AG: Ciao, Vantas.
> 
> arachnidsGrip [AG] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]
> 
> We're sorry, the tag "arachnidsGrip" could not be found on the network. Please check the tag for spelling and capitals and try again.

> apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG], caligulasAquarium [CA], and arsenicCatnip [AC]:
> 
> AA: ive been instructed by my kismet t0 make a request 0f any0ne supposedly 0nline regarding the pr0per handling of sept-pr0t0typed flight-capable gicl0psi  
>  AA: any advice v0lunteered w0uld be  
>  AA: pertinent  
>  AA: ribbit

Both hours ago. Feferi squeezed at the bridge of her nose to keep down her mounting headache, and reached with one hand to retrieve her goggles from her laptop, useless as they were out in the air. Thank goodness the others were still online, or the long delay after Aradia's post would have suggested the worst. Karkat had really screwed the pooch on this one, more than just in leaving them to their own but in giving Equius yet another reason to hate him, and she didn't know whether to blame herself for letting him in charge or leaving him on his own.

But it was the last one that did it, that finally drove her up the wall.

> arsenicCatnip [AC] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]:
> 
> AC: :33 < *ac enters karkats room with cautious stealth*  
>  AC: :33 < *she steps slowly into the light revealing that she has somehow hurted her paw!!* :((  
>  AC: :33 < *ac wonders where karkat has gone and wonders if everything is all right!*  
>  AC: :33 < *with a worried look on her face, ac settles into a little ball and goes to sleep on karkats desk*  
>  AC: :33 < *and later wakes up when her paw hurts to much to sleep any more* :((

That last post had actually been fairly recent. Reaching over, Feferi decided to at least check in with her, seeing as how she was the only one who appeared to be as online as their status indicated.

> CG: )(i Nepeta.  
> AC: :33 < *ac perks up at the sound of the voice of her fishy friend!*  
> AC: :33 < *she comes over to the side of the water and bats at her with her paw, wondering why she is disgused as their friend Karkat.*  
> CG: )(ow's your wrist doing? 38(  
> AC: :33 < baaaaaaaaaad :((  
> AC: :33 < *ac holds up her hurt paw to the water*  
> AC: :33 < it is so hard to type like this  
> AC: :33 < but your lusus is helping she tells me stories!  
> AC: :33 < she said in a few w33ks I'd m33t a friend from far far far away that will play animals with me!  
> CG: Really? )(mm. I don't know what she could mean.  
> AC: :33 < me neither AC: :33 < i've b33n spending all my time asl33p lately  
> AC: :33 < my arm's not broken on derse  
> AC: :33 < but i've b33n there so long that it's making me f33l like i'm nepeta all the time  
> AC: :oo  
> AC: :33 < *ac lies down next to the water to sulk*  
> CG: 38(  
> AC: :33 < *ac comes up to the water and bats at her fishy friend with her good paw to ask what the matter is!*  
> CG: )(uh? O)(. Is it that obvious?  
> AC: :33 < sorry  
> CG: Well, I wouldn't worry about it. It's been a bad morning.  
> AC: :33 < *ac cocks her head and asks about her friend karkat*  
> CG: Krabcatch is fine.  
> 

"Get your pointy fucking elbows off my chest right now."

"Make me."

> CG: He's just been busy, away from the computer.  
> AC: :33 < *ac looks sad because she really wanted to talk to him today!*  
> AC: :33 < but that's okay. if i have to k33p going to sl33p i can at least make the best of it!  
> CG: )(ow do you mean?  
> AC: :33 < because your lusus says karkat is going to wake up tomorrow!  
> CG: Really?
> 
> AC: :33 < yup! and i'm gonna go over to to prospit and show him around!  
>  AC: :33 < besides, i have a lot i want to tell him that i wanted to tell in person! >:))  
>  AC: :33 < wish me luck? :33

"…Oh no." Feferi said in the wake of a pang from her migraine, and read the last line again. "Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh nooooo…" She didn't have to ask what Nepeta had meant. This was one of the worst mornings ever, what else could she possibly have meant?

> CG: Do you really think that's such a good idea right now?  
> AC: :33 < sure, why not? we'll have nothing else to do :))  
> 

Feferi sat and stared, thinking long and hard, knowing that only the right kind of pressure would really ease off what was happening here. In the background, past the monitor, Karkat had solved the elbows issue by pulling Terezi back into a kiss. That was not helping Feferi at all, of course, and beyond…

"wHoA, yOu GuYs, I jUsT hAd A wIcKeD-sHiT dReAm WhErE i WaS tRoLl CeSaR rOmErO."

They all looked up at once as Gamzee pulled himself from the recouperacoon, dripping slime.

"Ugh, dude…" Karkat groaned.

Feferi's response was more of a gasp. "Gamzee!"

And last of all Terezi, who whispered "Gamzee!" almost worshipfully. "You're _beautiful_."

"tHaNkS, i KnOw!"

Since the game had begun and resources had been tight, certain non-standard procedures had been in place regarding recuperation, among other parts of daily life. Almost all of their sopor slime was recycled those days. Recouperacoons were a bit pricey in terms of grist and Kanaya's was the only clean one they had left to copy for fresh slime, and it had yet to make its rounds all the way up to LOTAF. As a result, those Trolls still unawakened had to rely on what was left to clear their dreams, and Gamzee had the worst of it. As a result, it was understandable that he had stalked out of the cocoon wearing nothing but the hideous pair of glow-in-the-dark shorts he had alchemized for himself. What was surprising was that it appeared that somewhere between when Feferi had seen him last and this morning, he had found his way into Terezi's things.

"Gamzee!" Feferi shrieked at him again. "Gamzee, I was in there! Ugh, I am!" She began scrubbing at her arm. "I'm completely covered in paint!"

"sOrRy lA-- wAiT, hOlD oN." He then scrubbed out his ear and coughed twice. "Okay, cool, what was that?"

She squirmed a little. "I said I was in there!"

"Whoa, sorry Lady, not when I got in. What's the deal?"

"Yeah," Karkat said behind his own hand shield. "The way I remember it, someone was in a bit too much of a hurry to get to sleep last night."

Feferi winced, and Terezi raised her head, with her arms on Karkat's chest.

"What was it, Gamzee?"

"I dunno, man, some kind of inspiring shit, though." He looked down on his chest. It didn't look like much of anything any more, thanks to the sopor slime that still clung to him, but it was clear enough thanks to the fact that it was meant for walls, or perhaps roadwork, and had not exactly washed away. No, it was fairly obvious despite his phrasing that he had painted himself up with a legion of hideous clown faces, all of whom were now melted and distorted in the worst possible way.

"But hey," he said, "no starin', I'm not here to edge in you and your kismet's private whatever." Karkat muttered something behind his hand, that had been put up in stark defiance of his best friend's phosphorescence.

That accomplished Gamzee collected his clothes and hit the alchemizer with two of his favourite totems to shock out breakfast and two bottles of Faygo. He then set himself at a mirror and retrieved a kit of paints from his modus after only three attempts. They lacked in dental care and bathing, proper laundry services and on some days, food, but god forbid they run out of face paint.

"So lIkE, wHaT ThE HeLl dId i mIsS?"

They got Gamzee up to speed in about the amount of time it took him to dress and fix his face paint, and when he was finished he waltzed past Karkat and Terezi, who had begun arguing fiercely about the details of the night, to sit on the desk next to Feferi.

"What's with your long face, Lady?"

She sighed, and gestured first to the feuding couple and then to Nepeta's conversation on the computer screen. To her surprise, Gamzee laughed at the latter and jumped down to reach the keyboard.

CG: wHoA TaLkInG KiTtY, yOu'vE GoT BrUtAl bAd tImInG  
AC: :33 < *ac perks up at the sound of her friend gamz33!*  
CG: hAhA iT's LiKe, Tc AlL pOpS InTo eXiStEnCe oUt oF ThE FuCkInG InTeRnEt  
AC: :33 < *ac marvels to s33 such miracles!*  
CG: GoT iT iN oNe! AnYwAyS kItTy, My bRo's gOt hImSeLf a lItTlE TiEd uP RiGhT NoW

"Gamzee!" Feferi whispered as if that had any impact on being overheard over the typing. "Don't tell her!"

"cHiLl, BrA."

In the background, she distinctly heard Terezi saying: "Hold on. Hold on. No. No, shut up. I have to bite you."

"Uh, how about no?"

"I'm serious, I have to taste your blood."

"Terezi," Feferi said, "I don't want to spoil this for you, but if it keeps you from bleeding Karkat: it's red, we can all see it."

"Yeah, I know," she said. "I can smell it pretty easily. But I have to taste it, I'm serious."

"So lick it off your fucking hand."

She made a face that was half grimace and half hunger. "I want to taste it _fresh_." Karkat did not entirely seem as intriuged by that as she did.

Feferi made a face of her own and turned back to see what Gamzee was doing.

> CG: BrO'S AlL BuRiEd iN ReLaTiOnShIp pRoBlEmS Up tO HiS HoRnS. EvErYbOdY WaNtS A PiEcE Of aDvIcE, yOu kNoW?  
> AC: :33 < oh yeah. equius wanted me to tell him what sort of things "girls like" and I was like, "i don't know anything about kismesis, equius!" i mean what are you supposed to do?  
> CG: mAn I dUnNo MaYbE bItE hEr Or SoMeThInG?  
> AC: :33 < hahaha, no, she's a robot!  
> CG: fUcK tHaT's RiGhT. gUeSs I dOn'T kNoW aNyThInG aBoUt GiRlS eItHeR.  
> AC: :33 < anyway, if Karkat is busy I will leave him alone because I will just s33 him tomorrow when he wakes up!  
> AC: :33 < *ac settles down on the carpet and purrs!*  
> AC: :33 < oh, and close this window so he doesn't s33333333!  
> CG: yOu FuCkInG gOt It, TaLkInG kItTy!  
> 

"Do you see?" she said, as he closed the window. "You see?"

"You bet, Lady. Love. Miracle."

"Wait, no, what do you mean?"

He returned to sitting on the desk beside her and cracked open one of his Faygos. "I mean three of our friends here are the luckiest shits I know because they get shots to fill up their goddamn lives overnight like one of my man here's favourite movies." Feferi rolled her eyes but he continued. "I mean, our kitty was talking about this the other night and I figured she'd find out about Terezi and it'd be like, wHoA, tRoUbLe, YoU KnOw? But now she gets her chance at getting a matesprit. If she found someone to hate and Terezi finds someone to heart before this is over, we can just wrap a bow on it and call it 'life.' FuCkInG. MiRaClEs."

"No, no, you don't get it!" Feferi crossed her arms and tried to straighten out her own thoughts before she explained aloud. "Nepeta doesn't _get_ blackrom. If Karkat isn't interested in dating her, or even if he is, and she finds out Terezi got there first? Nepeta and Terezi are _friends_ , matesprits and kismets don't get along! Don't you see? This could be even worse than if they were both in love with… wait, wait, hold on. What did you just say? About Karkat and Terezi? Earlier."

"FuCk mAn, I DuNnO! All I know is my man comes through the gate from here and whenever I ask him about Terezi he got fucking moon eyes. And I tell him what I told you, like, 'LoVe iS A FuCkInG BiTcHfUcKiNg mIrAcLe, MaN,' and he's like, 'GAMZEE, SHUT THE HELL UP." So I figured they had to be up to something flushed but..." He pointed at them and shrugged.

"What? No, no, that's not right!" Feferi's face fell what distance it had left to go to hit the bottom. "They didn't start being kismets until about half an hour ago. I mean, they looked really into it, but I just thought they were… you know, being teenagers. I didn't know they had been… Gamzee, this is _awful_."

"I dunno, Lady, everybody hates somebody sometime. Everybody fucking hates somehow."

"I know, I-" She stopped as she realized he had begun to meanderingly hum some tune she had never heard before in her life, and she snapped her fingers in front of his face to regain his attention. "Still with me?" He nodded. "I just feel like they should be... something else. I mean, it's not like I don't get it." Still, she shook her head. "I was Eridan's moirail most of my life. I know how this works. 'No, Eridan, you can't "get" Vriska for kill stealing. You both kill steal. And on top of that, what you're stealing is actual kills!'" She began to throttle the air before spread out her hands as if to show how little she had had to work with. "Not that I could really say that last part. But I get it. I've never felt it myself, but it'll... say…"

She looked at the feuding couple but whispered all the same: "Imagine Nepeta and Karkat do hook up, and she doesn't mind about Terezi and they fall in love and they're the happiest couple you've ever seen. In the end? One day Nepeta's still going to find someone she hates so much it's not going to matter how much she loves Karkat. Hell, it's Nepeta, she's got… well let's just say that the only thing that makes her not size this new guy or girl for an intestine necklace is Equius. I get it, they're going to happen. But…

"These two used to be matesprits, you say," she said, "but now they're kismets with no moirails to keep them from being dangerous to one another, no auspices to keep them from bouncing around and… It's not fair! And now it's just a mess!"

She was babbling and knew it, so pulled her legs up into her chair and hugged them to chest. He, who had been diligently listening while chewing on his tongue, upside-down, passing her the second Faygo. She tried to smile and shake her head, but he insisted, and so she broke it open.

"Tell you what," he said. "I play diamonds with Karkat if you sort out Terezi."

She sniffed and took a drink of the soda. "But where are we going to find an auspice at this hour?"

* * *

An impossible distance away, in the Land of Dew and Glass, a young woman got the strangest impression that she was desperately needed elsewhere. And she'd have gladly gone if she had known where to go, and more immediately, if she could have escaped from the giant fist that held her above a sixty storey dead-drop. But no, it was hard to get to where you needed to go when you're so busy, as though the Naptha Giclops in front of you represented your life as filled with problems like it filled the horizon (or rather, given the angle, the ground).

That was the problem: the way life's little problems grow to colossal sizes and then, after you try your best to avoid them for about five hours, they punish your attempts to pick away at them by grabbing you with the third of their seven remaining arms and hold you up to their cat-mouthed, sea-monster beaked sets of jaws and fill the air with the deafening roar of trouble. And it can be hard to look past your trouble, when they block out all hope like wings spread wide enough to block out the sun. When your friends seem so far away (600 feet, below, to be precise), doing their best to help you, in the end you know the only one that can help you is you, and your chainsaw, damn the dead-drop and damn the consequences, invested with a sincere hope that tomorrow would be a better day.

But yeah, if she could have gone, she would have.

* * *

"Well fuck, Lady, let me give it a shot." Gamzee flipped about the desk like it was a vaulting horse and called out to the pair, which were wrestling on the ground, screaming at one another about who did or did not get to bite who. "hEy, YoU GuYs wAnT A mOtHeRfUcKiNg FaYgO?" And he held it up, mustering every Clubbed instinct in his body. They ignored him. "...welp," he said when he turned back. "I tried."

* * *

**Original Author's Notes:**

Everyone should have hideously overpowered monstrosities to serve as personal metaphor. The world is a richer place just for the idea.

Before any of you that have been paying extremely close attention to Gamzee's mutterings during this fic ask: it was [Bro](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_West) and Dave, in the ultimate example of cross-temporal subconscious irony.

I lost a few of my favourite lines over the course of this fic to the censoring (unfortunately, all the extra editing this version has over the uncensored means that it's not exactly ideal, either), but one joke was cut from all versions in this scene: the implication that Gamzee actually thinks Nepeta is a talking cat. I mean, why would she lie? Unfortunately, I just couldn't think of a way to subtly pull it off without having a dozen chapters to work with - just outright saying it was never actually funny. Oh well.


	6. Reality Would Like to Welcome You Home (Commentary)

> Where was I. I feel like I went for a months-long bender and woke up in bed naked next to a terrible fanfic.

Feferi woke up to morning breath and voices, her arms sore from being stuck under hear head the whole night long. She felt a foot kick her leg as Gamzee, still asleep across from her, tossed in his yet-ongoing uneasy sleep. Turning, she sloughed through the sopor slime to find the source of all the fuss.

"Karkat!" she shrieked. " _What_ the _hell_?"

> Feferi honestly doesn't know enough about what's going on to be swearing like this. If anything she should be making angry fish puns, but I just can't do the fish puns. This was not the correct solution.

He lay on his back with Terezi still on top of him, a streak of shimmering teal on the carpet beside the aggravated wound on her left leg, their fingersnails scuffed teal and red, opposing, and both their faces spoke more or less to the details of their altercation. A sheepish grin on one face and a snarl on the other, both could be afforded only just about as much dignity as respective onlookers might be willing to afford to someone lying on the ground, clothes speckled with mixed blood. Karkat aggressively defended a spot near his collar.

> "only just about as much dignity…" I think that's supposed to be a repetition joke. Was that supposed to be a repetition joke. I'm pretty sure that was supposed to be a repetition joke.
> 
> My actual point is that it's awful.

"Hi Feferi!" Terezi called. "When did you get here?"

"Me?" Feferi shut her eyes in vague hope that this would all prove to be some sort of left-field, actual dream. No luck. "I've been asleep here for hours, I was about ask you the same question."

Terezi gasped. "Karkat! …Were we not _alone_?"

"Oh, please shut the fuck up."

Feferi collected her tiara from the side of the recouperacoon, stood up and began to wipe away slime, which slurped and burped as she left it, and began tugging the stuff out of tangles in her hair and wiping it off of her bathing suit in dollops. "Karkat, I'm serious, I leave you in charge for one evening of peace and quiet and this… if there are any important emails from the others, I'm not going to let you hear the end of it."

> Apparently Feferi's already in charge in this version. It was just my rational conclusion at the time: Karkat was trying to be leader, but the actual leader was the girl in charge. But I'm not sure where I got this impression, because she's clearly not even trying to be in charge in canon. It would have made more sense for her to gravitate towards it in the course of the fic. This implies to me that _Hands_ ' mention of a rebellion was actually headcanon and not just "an interesting idea I wanted to write about." Huh.

Terezi tickled her fingers across Karkat's chest in an oh-too-obvious ploy to sneak back to his pressure point. "Oh, I don't think I've been keeping him that busy."

"Like hell," Karkat interrupted before she could go any further, both verbally and physically. "She's exiled Jack Noir."

Feferi, who had been stepping out of the cocoon, slipped and only barely managed to catch herself thanks to a lucky lodge of her foot on Gamzee, who muttered "N-never gonna… catch me…" and continued sleeping. Feferi caught her breath, took both feet on solid ground and approached the both of them on the floor.

"What?" she demanded from above.

> Gotta respect Feferi getting out of the tub so cleanly after that news, which is pretty high up there on the _what-the-fuck-we're-all-screwed_ scale of things that could happen in a single night's rest. I've had bad news "better" than this one come to me only first thing in the morning, and those are hard enough to deal with.
> 
> Just to continue the ongoing thread of Troll Batman references, I think this is the best one even though it's in no way a direct "Batman" hint. That's because it implies to me that Gamzee's playing more of a trickster-Joker role in his dream than a psychotic-Joker, and sure enough, he backs that up when he wakes.

"She and Vriska knocked him out and put him on a shuttle. And they've destroyed the Black Ring."

She set her teeth. "Where's…" But her natural Troll-fury came to a stop when she took a moment to absorb the scene in front of her once again, and she returned with a stammer. "W-wait. Wait a minute. Karkat, is…" She pointed to the both of them. "Is this your idea of a punishment?"

"I know!" Terezi said with a shriek of laughter. "I thought he had a higher opinion of himself, too!"

Karkat made a face so tweaked Feferi knew she had to move on. "Where's Vriska?"

His face returned to simple, everyday rage. "Hell if I know, what am I, your newstroll?"

"Yes!" She stomped her foot, less out of immaturity and more because it was so close to his face. "Because I asked you to keep me up to date on things while I slept! Terezi—"

"Well she's not going to tell you shit," Karkat said, flicking at one of Terezi's horns.

"It's true," she admitted, sombrely.

> I know "I won," was more of a dramatic pronunciation than anything else, but Terezi has so clearly and totally won.

"Look," Karkat said, "all I know is that she got away and she's completely off the network. I'm not even seeing memos from Future Her any more. It's like the timeline spat her out… or all of us."

> Karkat suspects the schism that's going to follow this break of "the rules", but doesn't do anything about it. Inspiring. I suppose you could blame him being distracted with Terezi, but really, his unwillingness to act is what leads Feferi to take the reigns, and it's really not justified. What is this ramshackle bullshit?

Feferi discovered that she was getting a headache in about the fastest time she had ever experienced. Waking up this morning was proving to be quite the dive into ice water.

> That's it for seatroll jokes, folks, go home.

The pulsing tic of truebred Troll rage ticked in her head, but she put out her dignity and carefully selected her next words: "Terezi, I'd don't think I've ever seen a servant of the law so… defiant of authority."

"Well, you see, Karkat and I just wrapped up a really long discussion about his authority a minute or two before you—"

With a flick of her wrist and a lightning crack, the [Psii]don's Entente appeared in Feferi's right hand and she slammed it down to the ground, impaling the carpet. Terezi's face fell when she realized at what she was looking, and followed it up to Feferi's eyes and a Serious Face that did not at all need to be forced.

> I know I won't shut up, but past me really needs a smack for "she realized at what she was looking".

"…Sand and Zephyr," she answered. "Vriska said she'd grab Tavros and… I don't know." When Feferi did not relent, she insisted: "That's all I know!"

"Why?"

Terezi's dead eyes fell. "Would either of you believe this is for all our goods?"

> The original draft is missing the word "for" and I couldn't remember what the hell she was talking about. I was going to comment some guess as to what was going on, but I think then past me would be allowed to smack me back, and that just can't be allowed.

"Can you prove it?"

"…No."

Feferi yanked out her trident and walked around them, snapping the rest of her clothes off of a hook as she went. "I'm checking Trollian. If I find out that the others have gotten into trouble while you were rolling around trying to stab each other, you're not going to hear the end of it, Karkat!"

"Terrified," he replied with a shaking gesture from his hand, and then: "Ow! What was that for?"

"H3H3H3H3H3H3…"

The computers were set up in an arc, forming a cubicle of laptops, spider-legged consoles and worse. Terezi's computer had a brick on top of it, Feferi had no idea where from, and Gamzee's sat unattended (she knew better than to bother it as it had the loudest startup noise she could imagine), but both hers and Karkat's were on, each with unread messages. As much as she wanted to see if she had to get on Karkat's case as soon as possible, she started with her own. Settling down in front of the arc, she really had no idea exactly what she was going to get into.

> centaursTesticle [CT] began trolling cuttlefishCuller [CC], caligulasAquarium [CA], terminallyCapricious [TC] and carcinoGeneticist [CG]:

> Memos were out by the time of this fic's initial drafts, but it wasn't clear a multi-chat _wasn't_ possible. That said, it looks sloppy now.

> CT: D --> To all those it may concern in the upper echelons of command,  
>  CT: D --> And also Vantas,  
>  CT: D --> My team has made contact with the Sylph and is proceeding in a general sweep of the dry sectors of LODAG.  
>  CT: D --> No sign of Lord Amphora.  
>  CT: D --> Any reply from him about where to 100k would be, as usual, very helpful.  
>  CT: D --> Nothing? Alright, I don't know exactly what I was expecting.  
>  CT: D --> I would like to repeat my complaint that there is no need to babysit a fully capable royal.  
>  CT: D --> Especially on orders from the grey-toned mystery rung of command.  
>  CT: D --> My team will continue its sweep despite my apprehensions, at least until I am relieved from Karkat's elusive-waterfowl hunt by the de jure.  
>  CT: D --> Nepeta has already broken her wrist in this farce during an encounter with a quad-prototyped lich.  
>  CT: D --> The princess' 100susprite has graciously volunteered to protect her while the three of us move on.  
>  CT: D --> Although,  
>  CT: D --> I would like to voice a concern that such a powerful creature was prototyped after we already knew the advantage given to our foes.  
>  CT: D --> Respectfully.  
>  CT: D --> Though it now occurs to me that the princess' server player bears more of the responsibility.  
>  CT: D --> Yes, I do think that best explains where to assign the blame.  
>  CT: D --> I digress. Patrolling now, do not expect much trouble.

> Once again I feel obliged to point out that Equius had not yet pointed out the "animosity" between land dwellers and seatrolls.
> 
> As for Nepeta's broken wrist, I like to think she just punched a Crab-Lich really hard in the face.

Feferi certainly was not going to put up with having to answer _that_ first thing in the morning. Besides, the entire post had been made not long after she had fallen asleep, so there was no real urgency, and as much as she hated to admit it to herself, no real surprise to find that Eridan was still missing. That was all in her messages, although Karkat had a number more, much to her chagrin.

> arachnidsGrip [AG] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]:
> 
> AG: Hey Karkat  
>  AG: What's gray online 8ut red all over?  
>  AG: Ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahahah ahahahahahahahahahaahahahah!  
>  AG: Ciao, Vantas.
> 
> arachnidsGrip [AG] ceased trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]
> 
> We're sorry, the tag "arachnidsGrip" could not be found on the network. Please check the tag for spelling and capitals and try again.

> If you've been wondering why the Trolls having minor leadership spats like this would lead to real trouble, Karkat's blood colour being outted probably put lighter fluid on that – the fact that he was humiliated in the process made that worse.

> apocalypseArisen [AA] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG], caligulasAquarium [CA], and arsenicCatnip [AC]:
> 
> AA: ive been instructed by my kismet t0 make a request 0f any0ne supposedly 0nline regarding the pr0per handling of sept-pr0t0typed flight-capable gicl0psi  
>  AA: any advice v0lunteered w0uld be  
>  AA: pertinent  
>  AA: ribbit

Both hours ago. Feferi squeezed at the bridge of her nose to keep down her mounting headache, and reached with one hand to retrieve her goggles from her laptop, useless as they were out in the air. Thank goodness the others were still online, or the long delay after Aradia's post would have suggested the worst. Karkat had really screwed the pooch on this one, more than just in leaving them to their own but in giving Equius yet another reason to hate him, and she didn't know whether to blame herself for letting him in charge or leaving him on his own.

> "Screwed the pooch" is also begging for a fish pun, and yet, I have nothing. "Fertilized the egg pile?" At least then he'd have dropped dead, which I think is more along Feferi's mood. Oh, good, I can make terrible salmon jokes, that's better than nothing, somehow.

But it was the last one that did it, that finally drove her up the wall.

> arsenicCatnip [AC] began trolling carcinoGeneticist [CG]:
> 
> AC: :33 < *ac enters karkats room with cautious stealth*  
>  AC: :33 < *she steps slowly into the light revealing that she has somehow hurted her paw!!* :((  
>  AC: :33 < *ac wonders where karkat has gone and wonders if everything is all right!*  
>  AC: :33 < *with a worried look on her face, ac settles into a little ball and goes to sleep on karkats desk*  
>  AC: :33 < *and later wakes up when her paw hurts to much to sleep any more* :((

> Obviously healing candy doesn't work quite as well as it does in _Hands_ , where it works even if you're in not in a good position to be pulled back together.
> 
> "Hurted her paw" actually sounds less to me like childspeak than it may at first seem, as I tend not to use childspeak for Nepeta. Instead, it sounds like an internet subdialect used among my friends, especially in 2010, though it's mutated away from this suffix use since then. The primary objective was a low, white noise level of shared humour that lightens the conversation. The secondary is complete and utter obfuscation of meaning.

That last post had actually been fairly recent. Reaching over, Feferi decided to at least check in with her, seeing as how she was the only one who appeared to be as online as their status indicated.

> CG: )(i Nepeta.  
> AC: :33 < *ac perks up at the sound of the voice of her fishy friend!*  
> AC: :33 < *she comes over to the side of the water and bats at her with her paw, wondering why she is disgused as their friend Karkat.*  
> CG: )(ow's your wrist doing? 38(  
> AC: :33 < baaaaaaaaaad :((  
> AC: :33 < *ac holds up her hurt paw to the water*  
> AC: :33 < it is so hard to type like this  
> AC: :33 < but your lusus is helping she tells me stories!  
> 

> Oh, that's good news, and not at all terrifying in any way whatsoever. Glybsprite must have been an experience to any and all players passing through the Land of Dew and Glass.

> AC: :33 < she said in a few w33ks I'd m33t a friend from far far far away that will play animals with me!  
> CG: Really? )(mm. I don't know what she could mean.  
> AC: :33 < me neither

> Jade, was my intent, although Dave fits in if you want to make it slot into canon. As it stands, I'm personally favouring the popular theory of cat-dog dynamics occurring if Jade meets a Leijon, but _Hands_ continues undaunted!

> AC: :33 < i've b33n spending all my time asl33p lately  
> AC: :33 < my arm's not broken on derse  
> AC: :33 < but i've b33n there so long that it's making me f33l like i'm nepeta all the time  
> AC: :oo  
> AC: :33 < *ac lies down next to the water to sulk*  
> CG: 38(  
> AC: :33 < *ac comes up to the water and bats at her fishy friend with her good paw to ask what the matter is!*  
> CG: )(uh? O)(. Is it that obvious?  
> AC: :33 < sorry  
> CG: Well, I wouldn't worry about it. It's been a bad morning.  
> AC: :33 < *ac cocks her head and asks about her friend karkat*  
> CG: Krabcatch is fine.  
> 

"Get your pointy fucking elbows off my chest right now."

"Make me."

>   
> CG: He's just been busy, away from the computer.  
> AC: :33 < *ac looks sad because she really wanted to talk to him today!*  
> AC: :33 < but that's okay. if i have to k33p going to sl33p i can at least make the best of it!  
> CG: )(ow do you mean?  
> AC: :33 < because your lusus says karkat is going to wake up tomorrow!  
> CG: Really?
> 
> AC: :33 < yup! and i'm gonna go over to to prospit and show him around!  
>  AC: :33 < besides, i have a lot i want to tell him that i wanted to tell in person! >:))  
>  AC: :33 < wish me luck? :33

> Assuming Karkat would wake up on Prospit "tomorrow" wasn't as bad a guess as it might have seemed: it has nothing to do with a concrete theory and more to do with the fact that time was so sloppily recorded in Act 5 that if Karkat did wake up during the game, my prediction was that _we would not be able to tell when_ and so the fic would stand up to the test of time in that regard. At least until the part where Nepeta certainly wasn't going to show up from Derse to greet him. Whoops.

"…Oh no." Feferi said in the wake of a pang from her migraine, and read the last line again. "Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh nooooo…" She didn't have to ask what Nepeta had meant. This was one of the worst mornings ever, what else could she possibly have meant?

> CG: Do you really think that's such a good idea right now?  
> AC: :33 < sure, why not? we'll have nothing else to do :))  
> 

Feferi sat and stared, thinking long and hard, knowing that only the right kind of pressure would really ease off what was happening here. In the background, past the monitor, Karkat had solved the elbows issue by pulling Terezi back into a kiss. That was not helping Feferi at all, of course, and beyond…

"wHoA, yOu GuYs, I jUsT hAd A wIcKeD-sHiT dReAm WhErE i WaS tRoLl CeSaR rOmErO."

They all looked up at once as Gamzee pulled himself from the recouperacoon, dripping slime.

"Ugh, dude…" Karkat groaned.

Feferi's response was more of a gasp. "Gamzee!"

And last of all Terezi, who whispered "Gamzee!" almost worshipfully. "You're _beautiful_."

"tHaNkS, i KnOw!"

> Homestar Runner quote but for the life of me I can't find the exact cartoon.

Since the game had begun and resources had been tight, certain non-standard procedures had been in place regarding recuperation, among other parts of daily life. Almost all of their sopor slime was recycled those days. Recouperacoons were a bit pricey in terms of grist and Kanaya's was the only clean one they had left to copy for fresh slime, and it had yet to make its rounds all the way up to LOTAF. As a result, those Trolls still unawakened had to rely on what was left to clear their dreams, and Gamzee had the worst of it. As a result, it was understandable that he had stalked out of the cocoon wearing nothing but the hideous pair of glow-in-the-dark shorts he had alchemized for himself. What was surprising was that it appeared that somewhere between when Feferi had seen him last and this morning, he had found his way into Terezi's things.

> Also, he was originally naked before I put the fic up. Forums, eh, what can you do.

"Gamzee!" Feferi shrieked at him again. "Gamzee, I was in there! Ugh, I am!" She began scrubbing at her arm. "I'm completely covered in paint!"

"sOrRy lA-- wAiT, hOlD oN." He then scrubbed out his ear and coughed twice. "Okay, cool, what was that?"

She squirmed a little. "I said I was in there!"

"Whoa, sorry Lady, not when I got in. What's the deal?"

"Yeah," Karkat said behind his own hand shield. "The way I remember it, someone was in a bit too much of a hurry to get to sleep last night."

Feferi winced, and Terezi raised her head, with her arms on Karkat's chest.

"What was it, Gamzee?"

"I dunno, man, some kind of inspiring shit, though." He looked down on his chest. It didn't look like much of anything any more, thanks to the sopor slime that still clung to him, but it was clear enough thanks to the fact that it was meant for walls, or perhaps roadwork, and had not exactly washed away. No, it was fairly obvious despite his phrasing that he had painted himself up with a legion of hideous clown faces, all of whom were now melted and distorted in the worst possible way.

"But hey," he said, "no starin', I'm not here to edge in you and your kismet's private whatever." Karkat muttered something behind his hand, that had been put up in stark defiance of his best friend's phosphorescence.

That accomplished Gamzee collected his clothes and hit the alchemizer with two of his favourite totems to shock out breakfast and two bottles of Faygo. He then set himself at a mirror and retrieved a kit of paints from his modus after only three attempts. They lacked in dental care and bathing, proper laundry services and on some days, food, but god forbid they run out of face paint.

"So lIkE, wHaT ThE HeLl dId i mIsS?"

They got Gamzee up to speed in about the amount of time it took him to dress and fix his face paint, and when he was finished he waltzed past Karkat and Terezi, who had begun arguing fiercely about the details of the night, to sit on the desk next to Feferi.

"What's with your long face, Lady?"

She sighed, and gestured first to the feuding couple and then to Nepeta's conversation on the computer screen. To her surprise, Gamzee laughed at the latter and jumped down to reach the keyboard.

CG: wHoA TaLkInG KiTtY, yOu'vE GoT BrUtAl bAd tImInG  
AC: :33 < *ac perks up at the sound of her friend gamz33!*  
CG: hAhA iT's LiKe, Tc AlL pOpS InTo eXiStEnCe oUt oF ThE FuCkInG InTeRnEt  
AC: :33 < *ac marvels to s33 such miracles!*  
CG: GoT iT iN oNe! AnYwAyS kItTy, My bRo's gOt hImSeLf a lItTlE TiEd uP RiGhT NoW

"Gamzee!" Feferi whispered as if that had any impact on being overheard over the typing. "Don't tell her!"

"cHiLl, BrA."

In the background, she distinctly heard Terezi saying: "Hold on. Hold on. No. No, shut up. I have to bite you."

> "I have to bite you." I can't believe I didn't put that into aHiHH.

"Uh, how about no?"

"I'm serious, I have to taste your blood."

"Terezi," Feferi said, "I don't want to spoil this for you, but if it keeps you from bleeding Karkat: it's red, we can all see it."

"Yeah, I know," she said. "I can smell it pretty easily. But I have to taste it, I'm serious."

"So lick it off your fucking hand."

She made a face that was half grimace and half hunger. "I want to taste it _fresh_." Karkat did not entirely seem as intriuged by that as she did.

Feferi made a face of her own and turned back to see what Gamzee was doing.

> CG: BrO'S AlL BuRiEd iN ReLaTiOnShIp pRoBlEmS Up tO HiS HoRnS. EvErYbOdY WaNtS A PiEcE Of aDvIcE, yOu kNoW?  
> AC: :33 < oh yeah. equius wanted me to tell him what sort of things "girls like" and I was like, "i don't know anything about kismesis, equius!" i mean what are you supposed to do?  
> CG: mAn I dUnNo MaYbE bItE hEr Or SoMeThInG?  
> AC: :33 < hahaha, no, she's a robot!  
> CG: fUcK tHaT's RiGhT. gUeSs I dOn'T kNoW aNyThInG aBoUt GiRlS eItHeR.  
> 

> Perfectly good advice for guys though, give it a shot Nep.

> AC: :33 < anyway, if Karkat is busy I will leave him alone because I will just s33 him tomorrow when he wakes up!  
> AC: :33 < *ac settles down on the carpet and purrs!*  
> AC: :33 < oh, and close this window so he doesn't s33333333!  
> CG: yOu FuCkInG gOt It, TaLkInG kItTy!  
> 

"Do you see?" she said, as he closed the window. "You see?"

"You bet, Lady. Love. Miracle."

"Wait, no, what do you mean?"

He returned to sitting on the desk beside her and cracked open one of his Faygos. "I mean three of our friends here are the luckiest shits I know because they get shots to fill up their goddamn lives overnight like one of my man here's favourite movies." Feferi rolled her eyes but he continued. "I mean, our kitty was talking about this the other night and I figured she'd find out about Terezi and it'd be like, wHoA, tRoUbLe, YoU KnOw? But now she gets her chance at getting a matesprit. If she found someone to hate and Terezi finds someone to heart before this is over, we can just wrap a bow on it and call it 'life.' FuCkInG. MiRaClEs."

"No, no, you don't get it!" Feferi crossed her arms and tried to straighten out her own thoughts before she explained aloud. "Nepeta doesn't _get_ blackrom. If Karkat isn't interested in dating her, or even if he is, and she finds out Terezi got there first? Nepeta and Terezi are _friends_ , matesprits and kismets don't get along! Don't you see? This could be even worse than if they were both in love with… wait, wait, hold on. What did you just say? About Karkat and Terezi? Earlier."

"FuCk mAn, I DuNnO! All I know is my man comes through the gate from here and whenever I ask him about Terezi he got fucking moon eyes. And I tell him what I told you, like, 'LoVe iS A FuCkInG BiTcHfUcKiNg mIrAcLe, MaN,' and he's like, 'GAMZEE, SHUT THE HELL UP." So I figured they had to be up to something flushed but..." He pointed at them and shrugged.

"What? No, no, that's not right!" Feferi's face fell what distance it had left to go to hit the bottom. "They didn't start being kismets until about half an hour ago. I mean, they looked really into it, but I just thought they were… you know, being teenagers. I didn't know they had been… Gamzee, this is _awful_."

"I dunno, Lady, everybody hates somebody sometime. Everybody fucking hates somehow."

"I know, I-" She stopped as she realized he had begun to meanderingly hum some tune she had never heard before in her life, and she snapped her fingers in front of his face to regain his attention. "Still with me?" He nodded. "I just feel like they should be... something else. I mean, it's not like I don't get it." Still, she shook her head. "I was Eridan's moirail most of my life. I know how this works. 'No, Eridan, you can't "get" Vriska for kill stealing. You both kill steal. And on top of that, what you're stealing is actual kills!'" She began to throttle the air before spread out her hands as if to show how little she had had to work with. "Not that I could really say that last part. But I get it. I've never felt it myself, but it'll... say…"

She looked at the feuding couple but whispered all the same: "Imagine Nepeta and Karkat do hook up, and she doesn't mind about Terezi and they fall in love and they're the happiest couple you've ever seen. In the end? One day Nepeta's still going to find someone she hates so much it's not going to matter how much she loves Karkat. Hell, it's Nepeta, she's got… well let's just say that the only thing that makes her not size this new guy or girl for an intestine necklace is Equius. I get it, they're going to happen. But…

"These two used to be matesprits, you say," she said, "but now they're kismets with no moirails to keep them from being dangerous to one another, no auspices to keep them from bouncing around and… It's not fair! And now it's just a mess!"

She was babbling and knew it, so pulled her legs up into her chair and hugged them to chest. He, who had been diligently listening while chewing on his tongue, upside-down, passing her the second Faygo. She tried to smile and shake her head, but he insisted, and so she broke it open.

"Tell you what," he said. "I play diamonds with Karkat if you sort out Terezi."

She sniffed and took a drink of the soda. "But where are we going to find an auspice at this hour?"

* * *

An impossible distance away, in the Land of Dew and Glass, a young woman got the strangest impression that she was desperately needed elsewhere. And she'd have gladly gone if she had known where to go, and more immediately, if she could have escaped from the giant fist that held her above a sixty storey dead-drop. But no, it was hard to get to where you needed to go when you're so busy, as though the Naptha Giclops in front of you represented your life as filled with problems like it filled the horizon (or rather, given the angle, the ground).

> Naptha Giclops. Fanfiction, you amaze me. All is forgiven.

That was the problem: the way life's little problems grow to colossal sizes and then, after you try your best to avoid them for about five hours, they punish your attempts to pick away at them by grabbing you with the third of their seven remaining arms and hold you up to their cat-mouthed, sea-monster beaked sets of jaws and fill the air with the deafening roar of trouble. And it can be hard to look past your trouble, when they block out all hope like wings spread wide enough to block out the sun. When your friends seem so far away (600 feet, below, to be precise), doing their best to help you, in the end you know the only one that can help you is you, and your chainsaw, damn the dead-drop and damn the consequences, invested with a sincere hope that tomorrow would be a better day.

But yeah, if she could have gone, she would have.

* * *

"Well fuck, Lady, let me give it a shot." Gamzee flipped about the desk like it was a vaulting horse and called out to the pair, which were wrestling on the ground, screaming at one another about who did or did not get to bite who. "hEy, YoU GuYs wAnT A mOtHeRfUcKiNg FaYgO?" And he held it up, mustering every Clubbed instinct in his body. They ignored him. "...welp," he said when he turned back. "I tried."

> Auspistice fanfic completed you can all go home.
> 
> Unfortunately _this_ fanfic carries on.

* * *

**Original Author's Notes:**

Everyone should have hideously overpowered monstrosities to serve as personal metaphor. The world is a richer place just for the idea.

Before any of you that have been paying extremely close attention to Gamzee's mutterings during this fic ask: it was [Bro](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adam_West) and Dave, in the ultimate example of cross-temporal subconscious irony.

I lost a few of my favourite lines over the course of this fic to the censoring (unfortunately, all the extra editing this version has over the uncensored means that it's not exactly ideal, either), but one joke was cut from all versions in this scene: the implication that Gamzee actually thinks Nepeta is a talking cat. I mean, why would she lie? Unfortunately, I just couldn't think of a way to subtly pull it off without having a dozen chapters to work with - just outright saying it was never actually funny. Oh well.


	7. 13 Carat

"So what do you care, anyways?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said, head slumped into one hand. "I guess between Eridan and my Lusus I just got into a habit of babysitting people. I don't… I don't know." She sighed.

"Fuck, Lady," he said honestly, if a little spaced. "You look like someone ran over your favourite pet squid or some shit. Whatever happened to the girl that used to come visit in the shallows aLl fUlL Of fUcKiNg gLuBs aNd sHiT and smiling about some damn fish she rescued?"

Feferi sniffed back a tear and shook her head. "I don't know. It's just a bad morning, Gamzee. I-I mean. It's Vriska." She sighed again and tried her best to get to the heart of it. "After I broke off with Eridan, I felt so happy and free, and since Karkat was trying to run the whole show I just let him. I've been sitting most of the game out. But now Vriska is gone and… well, I've been sitting this game out but I still think… I think… that I might still be in control of the piece that can capture her."

"Well that's awesome, bring her in and we'll have this done by sunset."

She clung her arms to her chest. "But… Gamzee, this isn't as simple as pointing and ordering, if I want to do this I have to get back in the game, maybe back in charge, and I don't know if I c— I don't know if I want to." She gave a short, inadvertent cry and a tear ran down her cheek. "I can't do both, not do both and keep all I've got. No time to think, time to be me, time to be with… He said…" she started, the ghostly traces of a smile trying to force their way out, "he said I was gorgeous when I smile. Isn't that stupid? I'm crying over a compliment. And besides, has any empress in history ever even smiled, I mean, it's just stupid?"

Gamzee looked a little confused, and scratched at the back of his head. "FuCk, LaDy, I FiGuReD ThAt'd bE YoU."

"Huh?"

"Yeah! When we were all little grublings I figured one day we'd grow up and be all sitting around getting ready for another fight against the old regime. And if you weren't going around making fish puns with everyone you met I figured you'd be planning out the next strike, you know?"

"You…" she whispered, a little overwhelmed. "You would have fought for me?"

He reached up to muss his own hair. "oH FuCk yEaH! I mean, it was a bit of a game, but I don't think anyone didn't mean it. Eridan was all up in fucking face about calling you 'M'Lady' he was so serious, Lady."

"You mean... who are you talking about?"

"Yeah, Eridan and Karkat would have been generals, and Terezi wanted to run the military police. And hell, if I got to go out fighting surrounded by a bunch of like-minded motherfuckers in war paint, I'd die the hApPiEsT BaStArD ThAt eVeR LiVeD."

Feferi was so touched that for a minute she almost forgot to answer, but did so to voice a last reservation. "People change."

"yEaH, i kNoW WhAt yOu mEaN." He held out both hands palms up as way of apology. "Like, if Equius tripped and fell on his ass tomorrow, he'd have eleven sets of hands waiting to help him back up again." Gamzee began to ponder this as though he had only first heard the idea when it came out of his own lips. "He'd just have to decide if he wanted to get a bandage or a lecture to go with. We wouldn't have seen that a month ago, you're right."

Tears flowing freely, Feferi jumped to her feet and threw her arms around his neck. "But are you always going to be Gamzee?" she asked.

"…i dOn't tHiNk i kNoW HoW To bE AnYbOdY ElSe," he answered, confused. She nodded and wiping her tears away, took back to her feet. She collected her trident and returned to the middle of the room, where Karkat and Terezi had returned to making out.

"Karkat," she said, prodding him with the trident. "Karkat."

"What?" he muttered, and then when prodded: "WHAT? ARGH!" Terezi lashed out and bit him on the tongue. She then kissed him again and pulled away, looking uncomfortably content.

"Oh my god, you're delicious," she muttered. "I am the happiest kismet."

"WELL I'M GLAD ONE OF US IS!" he snapped.

"Take some of that healing candy" Feferi said, trying to sound unconcerned, "and listen to me. Terezi, earlier, you said something about you being able to justify exiling Jack and breaking the ring."

Terezi looked up at her warily, as if trying to gauge what trap was being set. "…Yeah?"

"If I got Vriska here, could the two of you tell us something that deserves to be believed?"

"Maybe," she said, still not entirely sure of the details. "…Yes."

"Karkat," Feferi said. "If Terezi and Vriska give you an answer you like, _and_ I can get everyone else under the same roof in the next three days, can you get them all facing forward and back on track to Skaia?"

Karkat's eyes flicked to his kismet, and gave Feferi a look much like hers. "If you can give me all that, I'll drop the King's head straight in your lap."

"Don't get cocky," Feferi said. "You're in charge, remember? Now I gotta get going. I've gotta talk to someone in person if we're going to catch Vriska. Keep her," she said, pointing, "here."

"You got it," Terezi replied, saluting. As Feferi turned to go, she heard her whisper: "Did you hear that? She called you a girl."

Feferi walked slow, running it over and over again in her mind, trying to figure out how to make her move so that no one could make an ill assumption. Any bad angle, anything that shook up their reorganization could rock the whole plan… if everyone didn't know what was really going on… and yet, she had to have Vriska. It was critical. If the Thief and the Seer didn't stand in the same room and fess up, that was the end of their order. But he would not understand, and if she could not explain it to him, things would snowball, fast. Her mind worked furiously. This was what she had been born to do – the question was simply if she was in a clear enough mental state to—

Her musings were interrupted when Gamzee cut her off and, as explanation, pointed her towards her computer:

> twinArmaggedons [TA] began trolling cuttlefishCuller [CC]:
> 
> TA: 2o like  
> TA: ii gue22 you're 2leeping over after all  
> TA: iin matter of 2peaking  
> CC: O)( my cod I'm sorry!!  
> TA: no, iit'2 all riight. ii mean, ii wa2 ju2t glad you fell forward and not back out the wiindow.  
> TA: anyway, ii alchemiized your recouperacoon and blended iit wiith miine 2o iit'd work out of the water.  
> TA: you look pretty 2nug iin there.  
> TA: man, that 2ounded weiird.  
> CC: )(A)(A maybe! O)( my god, you're t)(e best boyfriend --EV-ER!!  
> TA: ii dunno, ii mean, ii wa2n't about two make you 2leep on the floor liike 2ome 2chebag.  
> CC: No, you totally are!! 38D  
> CC: Look, Sollux, there's t)(ere's a lot of bad stuff going on )(ere. I gotta go and I t)(ink Karkat's going to need your )(elp.  
> CC: I mean, I wis)( you could )(elp me but )(e mig)(t N-E--ED your )(elp.  
> TA: okay, 2ure.  
> TA: ii mean,  
> TA: ii'll probably complaiin a biit 2o he doe2n't get two uppiity but ii'll do what he 2ay2 iin the end.  
> TA: how long wiill you be gone?  
> CC: I don't know.  
> CC: I )(ave a lot of serious stuff to do.  
> CC: --> 38|  
> TA: got iit  
> CC: I guess I will see you when I sleep!  
> CC: First thing!! 38D  
> CC: -Even if we still have work to do.  
> TA: yeah, but that'2 2tiill pretty good!  
> CC: Ya!  
> CC: But in case I don't get to sleep for a long time...  
> CC: *kiss*  
> CC: *kiss*  
> CC: annnnnnd...  
> CC: *KIIIIISS!!*  
> CC: GLUB 38)  
> TA: wow, okay.  
> TA: ii don't know what 2 do with three of them.  
> CC: You could give them baaack 3;)  
> TA: okay  
> TA: *ki22*  
> TA: no, okay, thi2 is 2tupid  
> TA: thiis fluffy shiit we're doiing riight here  
> CC: 38O!  
> TA: no  
> TA: see  
> TA: ii will ju2t give them 2 you iin person  
> TA: look at me beiing all effiiciient  
>  CC: )(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E!  
> 


	8. 13 Carat (Commentary)

"So what do you care, anyways?"

"Oh, I don't know," she said, head slumped into one hand. "I guess between Eridan and my Lusus I just got into a habit of babysitting people. I don't… I don't know." She sighed.

"Fuck, Lady," he said honestly, if a little spaced. "You look like someone ran over your favourite pet squid or some shit. Whatever happened to the girl that used to come visit in the shallows aLl fUlL Of fUcKiNg gLuBs aNd sHiT and smiling about some damn fish she rescued?"

Feferi sniffed back a tear and shook her head. "I don't know. It's just a bad morning, Gamzee. I-I mean. It's Vriska." She sighed again and tried her best to get to the heart of it. "After I broke off with Eridan, I felt so happy and free, and since Karkat was trying to run the whole show I just let him. I've been sitting most of the game out. But now Vriska is gone and… well, I've been sitting this game out but I still think… I think… that I might still be in control of the piece that can capture her."

"Well that's awesome, bring her in and we'll have this done by sunset."

She clung her arms to her chest. "But… Gamzee, this isn't as simple as pointing and ordering, if I want to do this I have to get back in the game, maybe back in charge, and I don't know if I c— I don't know if I want to." She gave a short, inadvertent cry and a tear ran down her cheek. "I can't do both, not do both and keep all I've got. No time to think, time to be me, time to be with… He said…" she started, the ghostly traces of a smile trying to force their way out, "he said I was gorgeous when I smile. Isn't that stupid? I'm crying over a compliment. And besides, has any empress in history ever even smiled, I mean, it's just stupid?"

> Here's perhaps the biggest gulf between "my Feferi" and the canon. My Feferi is considering using Eridan and his feelings as a political tool to keep everyone from entering into a horrible death spiral. I.E., she's on the edge of being a horrible person. Meanwhile, canon Feferi made herself clear and kept her distance, which is about all you can do sometimes in a breakup, which Eridan respected up until the point he decided to betray everyone into a horrible death spiral.

Gamzee looked a little confused, and scratched at the back of his head. "FuCk, LaDy, I FiGuReD ThAt'd bE YoU."

"Huh?"

"Yeah! When we were all little grublings I figured one day we'd grow up and be all sitting around getting ready for another fight against the old regime. And if you weren't going around making fish puns with everyone you met I figured you'd be planning out the next strike, you know?"

"You…" she whispered, a little overwhelmed. "You would have fought for me?"

He reached up to muss his own hair. "oH FuCk yEaH! I mean, it was a bit of a game, but I don't think anyone didn't mean it. Eridan was all up in fucking face about calling you 'M'Lady' he was so serious, Lady."

"You mean... who are you talking about?"

"Yeah, Eridan and Karkat would have been generals, and Terezi wanted to run the military police. And hell, if I got to go out fighting surrounded by a bunch of like-minded motherfuckers in war paint, I'd die the hApPiEsT BaStArD ThAt eVeR LiVeD."

> Aw, that's almost kind of cute. All dolled up with rictus. Is anyone else picturing that shot from Return of the Joker? Just me?

Feferi was so touched that for a minute she almost forgot to answer, but did so to voice a last reservation. "People change."

"yEaH, i kNoW WhAt yOu mEaN." He held out both hands palms up as way of apology. "Like, if Equius tripped and fell on his ass tomorrow, he'd have eleven sets of hands waiting to help him back up again." Gamzee began to ponder this as though he had only first heard the idea when it came out of his own lips. "He'd just have to decide if he wanted to get a bandage or a lecture to go with. We wouldn't have seen that a month ago, you're right."

Tears flowing freely, Feferi jumped to her feet and threw her arms around his neck. "But are you always going to be Gamzee?" she asked.

> …Asked Presence.
> 
> Is aHiHH just a legible fanfic of Musical Thrones this is distressing to me on a theological level.

"…i dOn't tHiNk i kNoW HoW To bE AnYbOdY ElSe," he answered, confused. She nodded and wiping her tears away, took back to her feet. She collected her trident and returned to the middle of the room, where Karkat and Terezi had returned to making out.

"Karkat," she said, prodding him with the trident. "Karkat."

"What?" he muttered, and then when prodded: "WHAT? ARGH!" Terezi lashed out and bit him on the tongue. She then kissed him again and pulled away, looking uncomfortably content.

"Oh my god, you're delicious," she muttered. "I am the happiest kismet."

"WELL I'M GLAD ONE OF US IS!" he snapped.

> You know, over time I've actually gotten kind of irritated with the "Terezi – blood taster" trope. I don't really have a good reason, I just sort of am.

"Take some of that healing candy" Feferi said, trying to sound unconcerned, "and listen to me. Terezi, earlier, you said something about you being able to justify exiling Jack and breaking the ring."

Terezi looked up at her warily, as if trying to gauge what trap was being set. "…Yeah?"

"If I got Vriska here, could the two of you tell us something that deserves to be believed?"

> _I have no idea what's going on._

"Maybe," she said, still not entirely sure of the details. "…Yes."

"Karkat," Feferi said. "If Terezi and Vriska give you an answer you like, _and_ I can get everyone else under the same roof in the next three days, can you get them all facing forward and back on track to Skaia?"

Karkat's eyes flicked to his kismet, and gave Feferi a look much like hers. "If you can give me all that, I'll drop the King's head straight in your lap."

"Don't get cocky," Feferi said. "You're in charge, remember? Now I gotta get going. I've gotta talk to someone in person if we're going to catch Vriska. Keep her," she said, pointing, "here."

"You got it," Terezi replied, saluting. As Feferi turned to go, she heard her whisper: "Did you hear that? She called you a girl."

> I really, really should have finished this commentary before going back to aHiHH, I missed so many good Terezi lines.

Feferi walked slow, running it over and over again in her mind, trying to figure out how to make her move so that no one could make an ill assumption. Any bad angle, anything that shook up their reorganization could rock the whole plan… if everyone didn't know what was really going on… and yet, she had to have Vriska. It was critical. If the Thief and the Seer didn't stand in the same room and fess up, that was the end of their order. But he would not understand, and if she could not explain it to him, things would snowball, fast. Her mind worked furiously. This was what she had been born to do – the question was simply if she was in a clear enough mental state to—

Her musings were interrupted when Gamzee cut her off and, as explanation, pointed her towards her computer:

> twinArmaggedons [TA] began trolling cuttlefishCuller [CC]:
> 
> TA: 2o like  
> TA: ii gue22 you're 2leeping over after all  
> TA: iin matter of 2peaking  
> CC: O)( my cod I'm sorry!!  
> TA: no, iit'2 all riight. ii mean, ii wa2 ju2t glad you fell forward and not back out the wiindow.  
> TA: anyway, ii alchemiized your recouperacoon and blended iit wiith miine 2o iit'd work out of the water.  
> TA: you look pretty 2nug iin there.  
> TA: man, that 2ounded weiird.  
> CC: )(A)(A maybe! O)( my god, you're t)(e best boyfriend --EV-ER!!  
> TA: ii dunno, ii mean, ii wa2n't about two make you 2leep on the floor liike 2ome 2chebag.  
> CC: No, you totally are!! 38D  
> CC: Look, Sollux, there's t)(ere's a lot of bad stuff going on )(ere. I gotta go and I t)(ink Karkat's going to need your )(elp.  
> CC: I mean, I wis)( you could )(elp me but )(e mig)(t N-E--ED your )(elp.  
> TA: okay, 2ure.  
> TA: ii mean,  
> TA: ii'll probably complaiin a biit 2o he doe2n't get two uppiity but ii'll do what he 2ay2 iin the end.  
> TA: how long wiill you be gone?  
> CC: I don't know.  
> CC: I )(ave a lot of serious stuff to do.  
> CC: --> 38|  
> TA: got iit  
> CC: I guess I will see you when I sleep!  
> CC: First thing!! 38D  
> CC: -Even if we still have work to do.  
> TA: yeah, but that'2 2tiill pretty good!  
> CC: Ya!  
> CC: But in case I don't get to sleep for a long time...  
> CC: *kiss*  
> CC: *kiss*  
> CC: annnnnnd...  
> CC: *KIIIIISS!!*  
> CC: GLUB 38)  
> TA: wow, okay.  
> TA: ii don't know what 2 do with three of them.  
> CC: You could give them baaack 3;)  
> TA: okay  
> TA: *ki22*  
> TA: no, okay, thi2 is 2tupid  
> TA: thiis fluffy shiit we're doiing riight here  
> CC: 38O!  
> TA: no  
> TA: see  
> TA: ii will ju2t give them 2 you iin person  
> TA: look at me beiing all effiiciient  
>  CC: )(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E)(-E!  
> 

> So I guess the point of the fic was to show that Feferi can be a leader and that that would be an interesting plot device (which Andrew chose not to take, because that is actually not her personality), and also that this fic is awful and I hate it?
> 
> I didn't even have the dignity to end it here, because I was still trying to guess what Eridan's role in the plot really was.


	9. False Friends

The Land of Sand and Zephyr sat silent, wind and storm forever away the only noise in that small corner, a spot in the centre of nothingness, too far from consorts, minions or other occupants, save for two quiet voices. The builders had been sent away, and only the voices remained, deep within a fort built brick for brick entirely out of boondollars.

"I've got to admit," one of them said, sitting in a high throne of cash, his normal chair beside him. "This is probably… the best thing ever."

"Told you," said the other, lounging toward him with her head in one resting hand.

"Where did this all come from, again?"

"Well, most of it's from our sidequests but you know..." she crossed her arms behind her head and lounged with a mischievous grin. "You gain a level here and there, right?"

And all at once the gate exploded in a flash of light, bricks raining down on bricks and sand, and in the hole past smoke and charred edges could be seen a young man riding atop a preposterous device, a mount of titanium and better, two legs and ten guns, scrounged from Caves and Silence and alchemized to meet his needs. He lowered his weapon and to the surprise of the first indoors, the other gave a shout of delight.

"Orphaner Dualscar, you old sea-dog!" she shouted, slipping into a pirate's accent as she closed the gap. "Where've ye been? We've searched high and low for ye and there's been narry a sight or sound."

"Soul searching, Mindfang" he replied, and reached out to shake her hand. "I didn't quite find what I was looking for, but when I heard a pretty voice I had to go turning back."

"Sweetness doesn't become ye, Orphaner," she said with a sly smile.

"That's all right," he said. "I wasn't talking about you, anyways." He let go of her hand and sat back on his robot, revealing with a gesture that her wrist had been bound by a laser-corded set of manacles to his own. She stared at them, dumbstruck.

"…you 8acksta88ing traitor."

"I'd prefer 'privateer,'" he said with a grin. "For the Empress of Twelve. And funnily enough, as I understand it, that's what I'm supposed to be calling you."

"The what of _what?_ "

"Well, I suppose I'm just making things up to suit my fantasies. Not quite Empress," he said, a shining example of how sometimes, even the best laid plans with the best intentions go just as quickly to waste and shambles. "And not quite Twelve, but I think we've all got some ideas of what Fef and Kar's little shindig is about, and I'm as entitled as anyone else. Now, c'mon."

She barred her teeth at him and it was entirely possible that she wasted an attempt to probe at the control of his mind. He just smiled back in reply, no sense of the ovverwwhelming emotion that had recently characterized his fellows, his calm hinting at the things he had seen, the hunting whisper from _ahead_ lurking in his mind, and his utter confidence in his simple misunderstanding

He could not bend or break. Tomorrow would see a trial of peers, tomorrow would see the crab and the centaur fumble for power but he knew – _he knew_ – that in the end everything would be set right again. Equius was coming, Vriska was coming, Eridan was coming lost and misled, and though he had no say in the matter, tomorrow Karkat would see Skaia.

"Tavros!" he shouted, with a wave of the Crosshairs. "…Let's go."

* * *

**Original Author's Note**

Yeah, that's where it stops. Again: the fic was originally a prediction. I predicted that:

  * Terezi would exile Jack without telling Karkat.
  * Betrayed, he would confront her and they would become kismets.
  * Sollux/Feferi seemed pretty vogue at the time ("at the time" being when it was just remotely being teased at) so I threw that in too. It was a nice contrast to the kismesis.
  * It hadn't occurred to me what "uniting the two races" actually means (in hindsight, it is a fairly obvious hint) so I assumed Feferi would be stepping up to pull her friends together.



A few other parts of the prediction didn't get into the fic, like the conclusion/what I think Rays and #@!&^ means, and Gamzee(diamonds)Fef more came from an art forum comment praising a Gamzee(diamonds)Vriska pic with "Gamzee is everyone's moirail." Thanks, random forum poster! You inspired like a third of my fic.

Just as one last bit of trivia: the alt ending I decided not to go with would have involved a month-later conversation between Nepeta and Jade (their second, Jade being "a new friend to play animals with"). It was going to hint back at the results of the Troll's counsil hinted at here, but I decided it was aggravatingly vague and would leave that up to the individual reader.

Last of all: is Eridan being exiled by Fin? Yessir. Yes he is.

Okay, no more yammering. 1000 points to anyone that's read this far. Later!


	10. False Friends (Commentary)

The Land of Sand and Zephyr sat silent, wind and storm forever away the only noise in that small corner, a spot in the centre of nothingness, too far from consorts, minions or other occupants, save for two quiet voices. The builders had been sent away, and only the voices remained, deep within a fort built brick for brick entirely out of boondollars.

"I've got to admit," one of them said, sitting in a high throne of cash, his normal chair beside him. "This is probably… the best thing ever."

"Told you," said the other, lounging toward him with her head in one resting hand.

"Where did this all come from, again?"

"Well, most of it's from our sidequests but you know..." she crossed her arms behind her head and lounged with a mischievous grin. "You gain a level here and there, right?"

And all at once the gate exploded in a flash of light, bricks raining down on bricks and sand, and in the hole past smoke and charred edges could be seen a young man riding atop a preposterous device, a mount of titanium and better, two legs and ten guns, scrounged from Caves and Silence and alchemized to meet his needs. He lowered his weapon and to the surprise of the first indoors, the other gave a shout of delight.

"Orphaner Dualscar, you old sea-dog!" she shouted, slipping into a pirate's accent as she closed the gap. "Where've ye been? We've searched high and low for ye and there's been narry a sight or sound."

"Soul searching, Mindfang" he replied, and reached out to shake her hand. "I didn't quite find what I was looking for, but when I heard a pretty voice I had to go turning back."

"Sweetness doesn't become ye, Orphaner," she said with a sly smile.

"That's all right," he said. "I wasn't talking about you, anyways." He let go of her hand and sat back on his robot, revealing with a gesture that her wrist had been bound by a laser-corded set of manacles to his own. She stared at them, dumbstruck.

"…you 8acksta88ing traitor."

"I'd prefer 'privateer,'" he said with a grin. "For the Empress of Twelve. And funnily enough, as I understand it, that's what I'm supposed to be calling you."

"The what of _what?_ "

> I'm with Vriska, what the hell is wrong with Eridan and for that matter, past me.

"Well, I suppose I'm just making things up to suit my fantasies. Not quite Empress," he said, a shining example of how sometimes, even the best laid plans with the best intentions go just as quickly to waste and shambles. "And not quite Twelve, but I think we've all got some ideas of what Fef and Kar's little shindig is about, and I'm as entitled as anyone else. Now, c'mon."

She barred her teeth at him and it was entirely possible that she wasted an attempt to probe at the control of his mind. He just smiled back in reply, no sense of the ovverwwhelming emotion that had recently characterized his fellows, his calm hinting at the things he had seen, the hunting whisper from _ahead_ lurking in his mind, and his utter confidence in his simple misunderstanding

> I have had a "Felt" tag on my stylesheet for years and it is entirely this fic's fault.

He could not bend or break. Tomorrow would see a trial of peers, tomorrow would see the crab and the centaur fumble for power but he knew – _he knew_ – that in the end everything would be set right again. Equius was coming, Vriska was coming, Eridan was coming lost and misled, and though he had no say in the matter, tomorrow Karkat would see Skaia.

"Tavros!" he shouted, with a wave of the Crosshairs. "…Let's go."

* * *

**Original Author's Note**

Yeah, that's where it stops. Again: the fic was originally a prediction. I predicted that:

  * Terezi would exile Jack without telling Karkat.
  * Betrayed, he would confront her and they would become kismets.
  * Sollux/Feferi seemed pretty vogue at the time ("at the time" being when it was just remotely being teased at) so I threw that in too. It was a nice contrast to the kismesis.
  * It hadn't occurred to me what "uniting the two races" actually means (in hindsight, it is a fairly obvious hint) so I assumed Feferi would be stepping up to pull her friends together.



A few other parts of the prediction didn't get into the fic, like the conclusion/what I think Rays and #@!&^ means, and Gamzee(diamonds)Fef more came from an art forum comment praising a Gamzee(diamonds)Vriska pic with "Gamzee is everyone's moirail." Thanks, random forum poster! You inspired like a third of my fic.

Just as one last bit of trivia: the alt ending I decided not to go with would have involved a month-later conversation between Nepeta and Jade (their second, Jade being "a new friend to play animals with"). It was going to hint back at the results of the Troll's counsil hinted at here, but I decided it was aggravatingly vague and would leave that up to the individual reader.

Last of all: is Eridan being exiled by Fin? Yessir. Yes he is.

Okay, no more yammering. 1000 points to anyone that's read this far. Later!

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I promised I'd say something about my first Homestuck fanfic, now didn't I? Well, I put the summary on my Tumblr, over on [this page](http://skaianr.tumblr.com/post/41675276457/my-first-homestuck-fanfic-sept-2010-a-summary).


End file.
